This book explores what the Victorians said about the Stuartpast, with particular emphasis on changing interpretations ofCromwell and the Puritans. It analyzes in detail the historicalwritings of Henry Hallam, Thomas Babington Macaulay,Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Rawson Gardiner, placing themin a context that stresses the importance of religiouscontroversy for the nineteenth century.

The book argues that the Victorians found the Stuart pastproblematic because they perceived a connection between thereligious disputes of the seventeenth century and the sectariandiscord of their own age. Cromwell and the Puritans becamean acceptable part of the national past, having been outsidersat the beginning of the century, only as the English statelost its Anglican exclusiveness. The tendency to accommodateCromwell and the Puritans, particularly in the work ofGardiner, thus reflected a process of nation building thatsought to remove sectarian divisions and which reached itsclimax as the Victorian age came to its close.

THE VICTORIANS AND THE STUART HERITAGE

THE VICTORIANS AND THESTUART HERITAGE

Interpretations of a discordant past

TIMOTHY LANGDickinson College, Pennsylvania

CAMBRIDGEUNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo

Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www. Cambridge. orgInformation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521474641

© Cambridge University Press 1995

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1995This digitally printed first paperback version 2006

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataLang, Timothy,

The Victorians and the Stuart heritage: interpretations of adiscordant past / Timothy Lang

p. cm.ISBN 0 521 47464 7

1. Great Britain - History - Stuarts, 1603-1714 - Historiography.2. Historiography - Great Britain - History - 19th century.

3. Great Britain - Intellectual life - 19th century.4. Great Britain - History - Victoria, 1837-1901.1. Title.

DA375.L35 1995941.06'072041 - dc20 94-31974 CIP

ISBN-13 978-0-521-47464-1 hardbackISBN-10 0-521-47464-7 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-02625-3 paperbackISBN-10 0-521-02625-3 paperback

For my parents

Contents

Preface page xiAcknowledgments xiii

Introduction iPolitics, religion and history: David Hume and the Victorian debate

1 Henry Hallam and early nineteenth-century Whiggism 23

2 Thomas Babington Macaulay and Victorian religiouscontroversy 53

3 Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 93

4 Samuel Rawson Gardiner and the search for nationalconsensus 139

5 Cromwell and the late Victorians 184

Epilogue 221Beyond the Victorians

Index 228

IX

Preface

Few periods in English history deserve the label "discordant" morethan the seventeenth century. The Civil War and Glorious Revol-ution, the sectarian strife that pitted Protestant against Catholic,Anglican against Puritan, the national antipathies dividingEngland, Ireland and Scotland - all of these conferred on the age ofthe Stuarts a singular lack of harmony. But for the Victorians, it wasdiscordant in another sense as well. The controversies of the seven-teenth century had left deep divisions in English society which werestill being felt long afterward. Victorian Whigs, Tories and radicalswere as divided on the past as they were on contemporary politics.Dissenters sought inspiration in an earlier Puritanism, while someAnglicans looked longingly to the Stuart Church. The Cromwelliansettlement still poisoned relations between Protestant England andCatholic Ireland. Indeed, no other period of the past intruded onthe Victorian present so discordantly as the seventeenth century.

The purpose of this book is to explore how a number of Victorianhistorians approached the Stuart past, and to propose a thesis. Thedebate over the seventeenth century, I will argue, generated a bodyof politically engaged literature because it touched on one of themost controversial issues of the day- namely, the conflict betweenChurch and Dissent, and to a lesser extent, between Protestantismand Catholicism. To be sure, the Victorian historiography of theStuarts spoke to other matters as well, and I have no intention ofreducing such rich material to a single theme. Important questionssuch as Parliamentary reform, democracy and the empire will bediscussed as they arise. But it was the religious dimension that gavethe debate, at least from the 1830s through the 1870s, much of itsurgency. We are only now beginning to understand how preoccu-pied the Victorians were with religious controversy - and not justwith the great struggle between belief and unbelief, but also with

XI

xii Preface

the sectarian disputes that made their mark on all fields of culturalendeavor as England slowly changed from an Anglican to a secularstate. An examination of the Victorian debate over the Stuarts willdeepen our awareness of the important role sectarian conflictplayed in Victorian culture.

This book will also demonstrate that the Victorians found thePuritan and Cromwellian episodes the most controversial aspect ofthe seventeenth century. The Civil War was a far more disturbingaffair than the Glorious Revolution and, in contrast to William'sassumption of the crown, the usurpation of Cromwell and thePuritans could have established truly frightening precedents. TheCivil War also raised the most relevant questions for the Victorians.What was the role of Protestant Dissent in an officially Anglicansociety? Was it a subversive force, eroding the foundations ofobedience much as the Puritans had done two centuries earlier, orwas it a constructive movement embracing the ideals of tolerationand liberty? How should the Establishment respond to thestrengthening of Dissent that occurred during the Victorian years?Should it bolster the Anglican exclusiveness of the constitution,adopting a position that might be seen as Laudian, or should it acton principles of toleration and comprehension? What wereEngland's mistakes in Ireland and what were their implications forcontemporary policy?

Finally, I will identify a progression in the historiography of theStuarts as it developed across the Victorian age. The Civil War,Commonwealth and Protectorate, episodes regarded in the earlynineteenth century as a disruption in the nation's past, a disturbinginterregnum, would become an acceptable part of that past by thecentury's end. This tendency to accommodate Cromwell andthe Puritans, I will argue, was part of a larger process of nationbuilding that was concerned with removing the divisions, particu-larly the sectarian divisions, in modern English society. As thebarriers against Dissent were removed, as the English state lost itsAnglican exclusiveness, so the Puritan past became integrated intoa comprehensive national history.

Seventeenth-century themes impinged on all areas of Victorianculture, including literature, the arts, history and religion. ThoughI have written a book about historians, I hope my exploration ofwhat these historians said and why they might have said it willinterest scholars in other disciplines as well.

Acknowledgments

This book began as a research project at Yale University. FrankTurner supervised my graduate work on the Victorian historiogra-phy of the Stuarts and has retained an interest in its future eversince. Peter Gay and David Underdown read an early draft andprovided useful commentary. I hope this final version pleases themall. A graduate fellowship from the Yale Center for British Artenabled me to spend time in Britain conducting original research.

In the course of my work, many libraries in the United States andBritain treated me with generosity and kindness. I am particularlygrateful to the librarians at the Yale Divinity School; TrinityCollege, Cambridge; King's College, London; Christ Church, AllSouls College and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for makingmanuscript material available to me. The interlibrary loan staffs atDenison University and Dickinson College have my gratitude forlocating and procuring many hard-to-find volumes. A grant fromthe Denison University Research Foundation allowed me to spenda summer exploring the libraries of Britain.

One of the more pleasing aspects of my research has beensharing my thoughts with colleagues. Peter Blodgett, BruceThompson and Brian Ladd have for many years provided conver-sation, companionship and support. Richard Brent read an earlydraft of my chapter on Macaulay, while Rosemary Jann and RebaSoffer commented on an early version of the chapter on Gardiner.I thank them all for their remarks. David and Anne Leahy inLondon and Chris and Liz Walker in Cambridge opened theirhomes to me (sometimes for months on end) during my trips toEngland, making my visits there all the more pleasant. I would liketo thank Dickinson College and my colleagues in the HistoryDepartment for providing a congenial environment in which tobring this project to its close.

xiv Acknowledgments

Ideas gain shape when they are spoken, strength when they arecriticized. In countless conversations, my wife Lisa Lieberman hassharpened my arguments by listening and questioning. What is bestin this book I owe to her.

INTRODUCTION

Politics, religion and history: David Humeand the Victorian debate

The Victorians wrote more on the Stuarts than on any other periodin their nation's past. Considering how important religiouscontroversy was to both the Victorian and Stuart periods, thispreoccupation with Charles and Laud, Cromwell and the Puritans,James and William comes as no surprise. As they reflected on thecontemporary conflict between Church and Dissent, the Victorianscould not help but sense a parallel with the sectarian strife thathad plagued the seventeenth century. Despite the Elizabethaninsistence on uniformity, the Reformation had created a nationthat was religiously plural, and the resulting conflict betweenProtestant and Catholic, Anglican and Puritan persisted well intothe Victorian age. As Robert Southey pointed out in 1813, theReformation may have been one of England's great "blessings," butit was a blessing bought at considerable cost. "The price we paid,"Southey explained, "for the deliverance [from Roman Catholicism]was a religious struggle which, after more than a century, broke outinto a civil war, which the termination of that war mitigated, butcould not quell, and which has continued till the present day."1

Britain, it seems, never thoroughly resolved its Reformation crisisuntil the close of the nineteenth century. As the Victorians wrestledwith the problems of religious equality, they naturally turned to theStuart past, producing a body of literature that was both scholarlyand politically engaged.

For the generation that had witnessed the French Revolution,

[Robert Southey], "History of Dissenters," Quarterly Review, 10 (October, 1813): 92-93. Ihave used two reference works - The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-igoo(Toronto, 1966-1989) and The Quarterly Review under Gifford: Identification of Contributors,1809-1824 (Chapel Hill, 1949) - to determine the authorship of the many unsignedarticles in the Victorian periodical press. Whenever the attribution for an unsignedarticle seems certain, I have placed the author's name in brackets.

2 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

the memory of Cromwell and the Puritans served as both areminder and a warning: an assault on the nation's traditionalinstitutions comparable to the destruction of the ancien regime inFrance had happened once before in England, and it could happenagain if radicalism and Dissent were allowed to triumph. Forconservatives like Southey, alarmed at the erosion of authority inthe aftermath of the French Revolution, the special strength ofEngland's constitution was its combination of ecclesiastical andpolitical institutions. The union of Church and state ensured thatreligion conferred on the state that sense of awe which, as EdmundBurke had remarked in his Reflections, rendered it sacred andinviolable in the minds of the people. What troubled conservativesfrom Burke to Southey about the opposition to the Stuarts was thatit had unleashed those forces which were now undermining thefoundations of this confessional state. Cromwell and the Puritanshad so thoroughly integrated political radicalism and religiousdissent that their attack on the crown had led inevitably to the sub-version of the Established Church. For apologists of the Anglicanconstitution, the Puritan episode could never belong to theacceptable past, for this past, as Southey made clear in his essaysand Book of the Church, must also be confessional. Within thisAnglican framework, the lessons derived from Puritanism werewholly negative, emphasizing the evils that would result from thetriumph of radicalism and Dissent.2

Nor were the critics of the Anglican constitution inclined to treatthe Puritan past more sympathetically. While Dissenters, Whigsand radicals were predisposed to back the Parliamentary side in theCivil War, acknowledging its substantial contribution to the causeof political and religious liberty, they all, for one reason or another,chose to distance themselves from the example of Cromwell andthe Puritans. For the Rational Dissenters, advocates of a reasonableChristianity shorn of its more fantastic elements, the religion ofthe Puritans seemed excessively enthusiastic and their politicscorrespondingly extreme. For moderate reformers like the Whigs,the opponents of the Stuarts had overstepped the limits of

2 [Robert Southey], "Life of Cromwell," Quarterly Review•, 25 (July, 1821): 279-347, "Hallam'sConstitutional History of England" Quarterly Review, 37 (January, 1828): 194-260, "LordNugent's Memorials ofHampden" Quarterly Review, 47 (July, 1832): 457-519. Robert Southey,The Book of the Church, second edition (London: John Murray, 1824).

Politics, religion and history 3responsible conduct when, under the influence of Cromwell, theydestroyed England's mixed constitution of king, Lords andCommons. Even the radicals, whose distrust of the crown andattraction to republicanism might have led them to look morefavorably on the Puritan past, hurled some of the most bitterinvective at the Protector. It was Cromwell, after all, who turnedagainst the Commonwealth in order to satisfy his own ambitions,thus terminating prematurely England's republican experiment.No one, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, wasprepared to utter a good word in defense of Cromwell and thePuritans.

In the course of the Victorian age, England would graduallycome to terms with its Puritan past, producing a shift in historicalperspective that is all the more striking given the widespreadantipathy toward Cromwell and the Puritans at the beginningof the nineteenth century. By Victoria's death in 1901, Cromwellhad become a hero for many, and Puritanism had come to beregarded as one of the formative forces shaping the development ofmodern England. In his Ford Lectures, delivered at Oxford in 1896,S. R. Gardiner went so far as to call Cromwell the "most typicalEnglishman of all time."3 Profound changes in the way a nationlooks at its past must reflect deeper changes in the way it regardsitself. This was certainly the case with England and the Puritans.By the close of the nineteenth century, established opinion had,for the most part, ceased to see the state as an Anglican strongholdresisting the disruptive forces of radicalism and religious dissent.As they abandoned their Anglican exclusiveness, the Englishcame to appreciate the more constructive side to Puritanism.Cromwell's coming of age was thus closely connected toEngland's transition from a confessional to a secular state, aprocess that brought together religion, politics and the writing ofhistory.

The story of this shift in historical understanding begins withDavid Hume, whose immensely popular History of England,published between 1754 and 1761, set the terms for much of thedebate that followed in the early nineteenth century. Hume'sHistory has been described as an Establishment history, one which

3 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Cromwell's Place in History, second edition (London: Longmans,Green and Co., 1897), 116.

4 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

used the past in order to support the existing Hanoverian regime.It aimed at encouraging political stability by alleviating the conflictbetween parties that derived from their partisan views of the past.If, as Paul Langford has recently suggested, eighteenth-centurypolitics were the "politics of politeness" or the "pursuit ofharmony,"4 then the same can be said of Hume's History. It was verymuch a "polite" history since it demonstrated how Whig and Toryversions of the past could be harmonized and rendered acceptableto the national interest. Just as polite society refused, for the sakeof harmony, to admit the ill-mannered, so Hume marginalizedCromwell and the Puritans, arguing that in the past their influencehad been mostly destructive. To domesticate the Puritans wouldremain the achievement of the Victorians.

Hume, in his political writings, displayed a strong preference forstable, established regimes. He endorsed the Revolution of 1688 notso much because he believed the nation had been right to resistJames II, but rather because the sixty or so years following theRevolution had brought peace, order and stability. Except for asmall number of Jacobite malcontents, the English had grownaccustomed to the Hanoverians, and Hume saw no reason tochange what was already well established.5 He also accepted theconstitutional arrangement that had emerged from the Revolution,praising it as "singular and happy," even though he was aware ofits drawbacks. In its favor, Hume pointed out that the eighteenth-century constitution had brought about the "most entire system ofliberty, that ever was known amongst mankind" because it guaran-teed the rule of law, protected the subject from arbitrary authorityand secured property against encroachments by the state.6 But atthe same time he acknowledged that it was potentially unstable.

Paul Langford, A Polite andCommercial People: England, 1727-1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1989)>5-6-David Hume, "Of Passive Obedience" and "Of the Protestant Succession," Essays Moral,Political, and Literary, eds. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, new edition (London: Longmans,Green and Co., 1882), 1: 463, 475-476, 479. See also Duncan Forbes, Hume's PhilosophicalPolitics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 96-97.David Hume, The History of England, from the Invasion offulius Caesar to the Revolution inMDCLXXXVIII, new edition, with the author's last corrections and improvements(Philadelphia: Robert Campbell, 1795-1796), 4: 302, 6: 279-280.

Politics, religion and history 5The existence of court and country parties, representing theinterests of the crown and Parliament, was a necessary anddesirable attribute of England's mixed constitution. So long asthese parties opposed one another moderately, each checking theexcesses of the other, a beneficial combination of liberty andauthority would result. But the risk was always present thatpolitical strife might upset the balance between parties and trans-form England into either an absolute monarchy or a pure republic.7Aware of this danger, Hume undertook to support the existingHanoverian regime by formulating a view of politics that wouldencourage constitutional equipoise.

Scholars have recently noted that Hume's defense of the Revol-ution settlement shared much in common with the ideology of theHanoverian court. Duncan Forbes has even described Hume's"philosophical politics" as an attempt to provide the HanoverianEstablishment with a rigorous intellectual foundation. WhenHume, in his History, denied the existence of an ancient consti-tution, when he endorsed the benefits of commercial society, andwhen he defended the crown's right to influence Parliamentthrough patronage, he was articulating a position that apologistsfor the court would have found congenial. But while we are surelycorrect to ally Hume with the court, we must also remember thathe was never the partisan of a particular party. On some issueshis stand resembled that of the country opposition - notably hisanxiety over the public debt and his dislike of standing armies -and he was prepared to criticize both the Whig and the Toryparties. When he attacked the theories, fashionable among Whigsand Tories respectively, of an original contract and passiveobedience, he was in fact demolishing the ideological props of bothparties. Rather than act as a partisan, Hume chose to standabove parties in order to moderate the conflict between them,though this position was also favorable to the court since theHanoverian regime would benefit most from the political stabilitythat Hume hoped to encourage. Indeed, the call for an end to party

7 Hume, "That Politics may be reduced to a Science," "On the Independency of Parlia-ment," "Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to aRepublic," and "Of the Parties of Great Britain," Essays, i: 107-109, 119-122, 122-126,133-137. Hume, History of England, 4: 284, 493-495, note LL. See also Forbes, Hume'sPhilosophical Politics, 184-186, 201-223.

6 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

strife was a familiar theme running through the court ideology ofthe period.8

As part of his effort to encourage political stability, Humeidentified two related challenges to the permanence of theHanoverian regime. In the first place, excessive strife betweenparties, especially when inflamed by dynastic or religious loyalties,appeared capable of upsetting a constitution which was balancedprecariously between king and Parliament. Under any mixedmonarchy, Hume believed, the political community would divideitself naturally into court and country parties. ContemporaryWhigs and Tories, however, had departed from this ideal byallowing dynastic loyalties to distract them from their true courtand country interests. The Whig allegiance to the Protestantsuccession and the Tory attachment to the Stuarts were aberrationsdue to the accidents of history which threatened to underminestability.9 The Jacobite uprisings of 1714 and 1745 were sufficientproof that dynastic concerns added an uncontrollable element topolitics. Since these loyalties were rooted in opposing interpret-ations of the past, an objective account of the seventeenth-centurystruggle against the Stuarts would help ease tensions and returnEngland's constitution to its original court and country purity. This,in part, was what Hume set out to do.10 Describing the writing ofhis History, he made much of his desire to remain above "popularprejudices."11 The result of these efforts was a narrative of theseventeenth century which demonstrated that the conflict betweenking and Parliament was largely inevitable and that the conduct of

8 The view that Hume's politics were "an attempt to give the established, Hanoverian,regime a proper intellectual foundation" has been developed most thoroughly byDuncan Forbes, Hume's Philosophical Politics, x, 91-101, 263-265. See also his "Politics andHistory in David Hume," Historical Journal, 6 (1963): 280-295, and his introduction toDavid Hume, History of Great Britain: The Reigns of James I and Charles I (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1970), 7-54. Other scholars, often building on Forbes's insights, havealso noted the similarities between Hume's political views and the court ideology of themid-eighteenth century. See in particular: David Miller, Philosophy and Ideology in Hume'sPolitical Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 163-184. H. T. Dickinson, Libertyand Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London: Weidenfeld andNicolson, 1977), 132-138. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine PoliticalThought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975),493-498.

9 Hume, "Of the Parties of Great Britain," Essays, 1: 137-141.10 Hume, "Of the Coalition of Parties," Essays, 1: 464, 469-470. Forbes, Hume's Philosophical

Politics, 263-267. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, 100-101.1' Hume, "My Own Life," History of England, 1: viii.

Politics, religion and history 7both sides was equally defensible, at least until Puritanism began to"poison" the Parliamentary cause.

The other potential source of instability according to Humewas fanaticism or enthusiasm. What made the conflict betweenpolitical parties so dangerous was that they often became infectedwith a fanaticism which drove them beyond the bounds of moderateand responsible action. This had been the case with the Puritansunder the Stuarts and with the Jacobites under the Hanoverians. Byillustrating the menace inherent in enthusiasm, Hume's History ineffect formed an argument against it. Like Edmund Burke laterin the century, Hume considered the intrusion of the pulpit intopolitics as dangerous: "the religious spirit," he observed in hisHistory, "when it mingles with faction, contains in it somethingsupernatural and unaccountable."12 Such had been the lesson of theEnglish Civil War: once the Puritans emerged as the most powerfulfaction in the Commons, it was only a matter of time beforefanaticism and subversion triumphed over moderation and con-structive reform. That the rise of Puritanism as a political forcehad led to the anarchy of the Civil War and Cromwell's usurpationwas no accident. Hume's History thus confirmed the maxim thatfanaticism in politics, if not restrained, must always culminate indespotism.13

Hume started his History at that point in the narrative where"the misrepresentation of faction began chiefly to take place."14

Historians had conventionally seen the reign of James I as thebeginning of the conflict that would finally end with the GloriousRevolution. Hume was no different; only, where others had writtenas partisans, Hume presented justifications for the conduct of boththe king and Parliament. He based his celebrated defense of theStuarts on a rejection of those arguments which appealed to animmemorial constitution in order to defend the rights and libertiesof the subject. The only constitution operative when James came tothe throne, Hume insisted, was that of the Tudors, and under thoseprinces the English monarchy had become nearly absolute. Thecourts of High Commission and Star Chamber, which exercisedarbitrary jurisdictions, the crown's frequent appeal to martial law,the absence of the right to habeas corpus, the monarch's ability to

12 Hume, History ofEngland, 4: 257. 13 Ibid., 5: 302.14 Hume, "My Own Life," History of England, 1: viii.

8 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

intimidate juries and other powers of prerogative had conspired toobstruct any plan of regular liberty. Even Parliament's traditionalprivilege of approving all taxation was frequently violated by theuse of forced loans, benevolences, ship money and other arbitraryimpositions. The dispensing power, which enabled the king to setaside any act of legislation, had further weakened the position ofParliament. Reviewing the extensive power of the Tudors, Humeconcluded that "the most absolute authority of the sovereign . . . wasestablished on above twenty branches of prerogative, . . . every oneof them, totally incompatible with the liberty of the subject."15 Onthe basis of the precedent set by the Tudors, and by Elizabeth inparticular, James was entitled to rule absolutely. Far from being anenemy of the constitution, he was, according to Hume, actuallypreserving that constitution as it had previously existed.

As James was following in Elizabeth's footsteps, his subjects,drawing on the Renaissance revival of classical antiquity, weredeveloping new ideas of liberty that would soon challenge hisabsolutism.16 The urgency with which the Commons opposed theirsovereign, Hume argued, was due in large measure to their recentprosperity. James, no longer able to finance the affairs of state fromhis own income, looked to the nation as a source of revenue. But theCommons, jealous of their property and animated by their new"spirit of freedom and independence," were reluctant to surrendertheir wealth to a monarch not known for his frugality. Here wasthe source of the conflict between crown and Parliament: theprosperity of the early seventeenth century had given rise to newideas about politics, stressing the liberty and independence of thesubject and necessitating a new arrangement in government. Toprotect the rights of the nation, it was now necessary to limit theroyal prerogative and secure the rule of law.17 Hume emphasizedthat the Commons, in challenging the authority of the king, wereinnovators who "less aspired at maintaining the ancient [Tudor]constitution, than at establishing a new one, and a freer, and abetter" one at that.18 For Hume, then, the tension between Jamesand his Parliaments was in a sense unavoidable. The king was asjustified in keeping to Elizabethan precedent as the Commons were

15 Hume, History of England, 4: 164-173, 177, 312-316.16 Ibid., 4: 209-212.17 Ibid., 4: 229-231, 493-495, note LL. 18 Ibid., 4: 232-233.

Politics, religion and history 9in responding to the new economic realities and the spirit of theage. In the struggle that was certain to come, Hume concluded,either "no party or both parties would justly bear the blame."19

The constitutional contest which began under James culminatedunder his successor. Charles I adhered firmly to the idea ofabsolutism that his father had inherited from Elizabeth, while theCommons remained protective of their wealth and, enlivened "witha warm regard to liberty," used the crown's need for revenue as ameans to restrain the royal prerogative.20 Under these conditions,the conflict between king and Parliament intensified untilcooperation between the two became impossible. As he chronicledthese disputes, Hume continued to insist that the conduct ofboth parties was defensible, if not always exemplary: the king'sviolations of liberty, though often dangerous and unwise, con-formed to past practice, while Parliament's attempt to limit theroyal prerogative, though unprecedented, was necessary for estab-lishing the rule of law. Discussing the five knights, whom Charleshad imprisoned for their refusal to support the forced loan of 1626,Hume provided a defense of both parties. Charles, he pointed out,was acting no differently than his predecessors, who had alwaysdetained their subjects arbitrarily, even though the practice was aclear violation of the law. The five knights, on the other hand, bychallenging the king's right to imprison at will, were forcing him tocomply with the law.21 Discussing the Petition of Right, Humesimilarly made the case for both sides. Because it circumscribed theroyal prerogative, the Petition was a forward-looking contributionto the growth of liberty. But the king's reluctance to recognize thePetition was also understandable since emergencies were likely toarise that would require him to violate the very liberties he wasasked to concede.22 When Charles finally chose to dispense withParliament altogether, he did so, Hume concluded, because it wasthe only way to preserve the constitution he had inherited againstthe innovations of the Commons.23

The Long Parliament completed the revolution that the Petitionof Right had initiated. Although Hume's treatment of the LongParliament was mostly hostile, he did not dismiss its accomplish-ments entirely. He saw its early acts, especially the Triennial Bill

19 Ibid., 4: 282-285. 2U Ibid., 4: 345-348.21 Ibid., 4: 360-367. 22 Ibid., 4: 378-384, 386. 23 Ibid., 4: 395-396.

io The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

and the abolition of the courts of High Commission and StarChamber, as important steps toward limiting the king's prerogativeand establishing the rule of law. "In short," he wrote,if we take a survey of the transactions of this memorable parliament,during the first period of its operations, we shall find that, exceptingStrafford's attainder, which was a complication of cruel iniquity, theirmerits in other respects so much outweigh their mistakes, as to entitlethem to praise from all lovers of liberty. Not only were former abusesremedied, and grievances redressed: Great provision, for the future, wasmade by law against the return of like complaints.24

What disturbed Hume most about the Long Parliament was notits attempt to establish legal government in England, but rather itswillingness to forgo moderation, a trait he attributed to the steadilyincreasing influence of Puritanism. That the fanaticism of thePuritans discredited the Parliamentary cause, Hume made abun-dantly clear:It may be worth observing [he wrote], that all historians, who lived nearthat age, . . . represent the civil disorders and convulsions as proceedingfrom religious controversy, and consider the political disputes about powerand liberty as entirely subordinate to the other . . . So entire was thesubjection into which Charles was now fallen, that, had not the woundbeen poisoned by the infusion of theological hatred, it must have admittedof an easy remedy. Disuse of parliaments, imprisonments and prosecutionof members, ship-money, an arbitrary administration; these were loudlycomplained of: But the grievances which tended chiefly to inflame theparliament and nation, especially the latter, were the surplice, the railsplaced about the altar, the bows exacted on approaching it, the liturgy, thebreach of the sabbath, embroidered copes, lawn sleeves, the use of the ringin marriage, and of the cross in baptism. On account of these, were thepopular leaders content to throw the government onto such violentconvulsions: and, to the disgrace of that age, and of this island, it mustbe acknowledged, that the disorders in Scotland entirely, and those inEngland mostly, proceeded from so mean and contemptible an origin.25

In his History, Hume chronicled the transition in English govern-ment from the arbitrary kingship of the Tudors to the limitedmonarchy of the Hanoverians in which the establishing of the ruleof law and the liberty of the subject played a crucial role. Had theParliaments of the early Stuarts acted with moderation to achieve

24 Ibid., 5: 24-25, 44-46.23 Ibid., 5: 20. See also ibid., 5: 63-64, 93-94, 475, note DD.

Politics, religion and history nlegal government, it appears likely that Hume would have had noquarrel with them.26 But Puritanism soon permeated the Parlia-mentary cause, giving it the strength to challenge the king'sauthority, but at the same time infusing the movement with anenthusiasm that would prove fatal in the end.

Hume viewed the Puritans, both the Presbyterians and Indepen-dents, as little more than fanatics. Their theology was absurd andtheir pretense to Godliness was mere hypocrisy, disguising the mostbase motives. Puritanism, Hume contended, broke society apartby annihilating those sentiments that restrained self-interest.Deluded into thinking they were serving a higher cause, thePuritans abandoned the values that normally regulated civilizedbehavior. Bound by neither shame nor duty nor honor, the saint"was at full liberty to gratify all his appetites, disguised under theappearance of pious zeal." Puritanism, Hume concluded, "loosenedall the ties of morality, and gave entire scope, and even sanction, tothe selfishness and ambition which naturally adhere to the humanmind."27 In both England and Scotland, Puritanism had ledinevitably to turbulence, sedition and the subversion of legitimateauthority. The Puritans may have challenged the king in order tolimit his prerogative and defend the rights of Parliament, but inthe process they raised an army in which the more extreme Inde-pendents came to predominate. In disregard for precedent andlegality, the Independents, hoping to establish a republic, purgedthe Commons of their Presbyterian rivals, executed the king -for Hume, the most atrocious of their crimes - abolished themonarchy, and turned out the House of Lords.

Hume found the statesmen of this Commonwealth narrow-minded and incompetent, preoccupied with maintaining their ownpower and consequently unqualified to settle the affairs of thenation.28 Nor did Hume consider it surprising that their failuresat government should terminate in the dictatorship of OliverCromwell, the only exceptional one among them. "By recent, aswell as all ancient, example," he reflected, "it was become evidentthat illegal violence . . . must inevitably end at last in the arbitraryand despotic government of a single person."29 Hume's portrayal of

2« I b i d . , 5: 15.27 Ibid., 4: 258, 319, 427, 495, note LL, 5: 94, 201, 475, note DD.28 Ib id . , 5: 288 . 29 Ib id . , 5: 302.

12 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Cromwell was overwhelmingly hostile, stressing the Protector'sambition and duplicity. Cromwell, Hume alleged, was a "franticenthusiast" and the "most dangerous of hypocrits." He was a "greatmaster of fraud and dissimulation," an "artful and audaciousconspirator," pursuing "by artifice and courage" a carefully laidplan to achieve his own "unlimited authority."30 At other times,Hume described Cromwell as an incredible combination ofcontraries. He was at once absurd and wise, despotic and just.Cromwell's words, for instance, were full of "obscurity, confusion,embarrassment," and yet his actions were "decisive and judicious."Indeed, Hume continued, the discrepancy between "the sagacity ofhis actions and the absurdity of his discourse" constituted the "mostprodigious contrast that ever was known."31 Once Protector,Cromwell devised policies that were as fair as his appointment ofhonest judges, as despotic as the imposition of the major generals,and as foolish as Barebone's Parliament, a "preposterous" assemblymade up of the "very dregs of the fanatics."32 In the end, Hume'sportrait fails to convince because the contrasts are too sharplydrawn. Unable to see Puritanism as anything but hypocrisy, andfailing to appreciate the sincerity of Cromwell's piety, Hume lackedthe insight which the Victorians would use to make sense out ofCromwell's otherwise inexplicable career.

With its attack on Cromwell and the Puritans, Hume's Historyfurnished conservatives in the period after the French Revolutionwith ample material for a historical defense of the Anglicanconstitution. For Hume, as for them, the social function of religionwas to promote political stability by inculcating values of obedience.Anglicanism, with its fondness for the monarchy, its "attachment toceremonies, to order, and to a decent pomp and splendor ofworship," was admirably suited for this task.33 Whereasseventeenth-century Puritanism had subverted establishedauthority and led to anarchy, Anglicanism under Laud's directionhad tended in the opposite direction. Hume was no friend of Laud,considering the Archbishop a fanatic who had done more harm thangood, but he saw the merit in Laud's emphasis on ceremony. HadLaud's ideas, Hume implied, been implemented with the "coolreflection of a legislator," they would have made the Church more

30 Ibid., 5: 161, 205-206, 256, 278, 299, 306. 31 Ibid., 5: 308, note t, 318, 341, note *.32 Ibid., 5: 308-310, 320-321, 331. 33 Ibid., 4: 495, note LL, 5: 1.

Politics, religion and history 13

attractive to the "rude multitude," and religion would have carriedout more effectively its task of instilling obedience.34 For conserva-tives in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, alarmedat the breakdown of order in France and fearing the same inEngland, the lesson of Hume's History was unmistakable: thepreservation of the Anglican Establishment and the proscription ofDissent were the necessary preconditions for maintaining socialorder at home.

11

Hume's account of the Stuart past was part of an effort toencourage moderation in the politics of Hanoverian England. Byalerting his readers to the dangers inherent in fanaticism, he madea strong argument for removing religious controversy from politics.He also hoped to ease the animosity between Whigs and Tories bydemonstrating that as far as their "historical disputes" were con-cerned, each of the contending parties "was justified by plausibletopics; that there were on both sides wise men, who meant wellto their country; and that the past animosity between the factionshad no better foundation than narrow prejudice or interestedpassion."35 This was the purpose behind Hume's History. To labelthat work Tory was thus largely misleading; like his other politicalwritings, its allegiance was to the Revolution of 1688 and theHanoverian succession. But despite its aims, Hume's Historybecame known as a Tory production. As Whigs and radicals in thelate eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries began to assail theHanoverian Establishment, they turned their attention to the workthat had provided that regime with such an elegant historicalfoundation. Historians like Catharine Macaulay, John Millar andCharles James Fox challenged Hume's defense of the Stuarts inorder to strengthen the case for the opposition. But while they allsupported Parliament in its struggle against the king, and whilesome even sympathized with the republicans of the Common-wealth, not one was prepared to initiate a full-scale reassessment ofPuritanism. Indeed, after the outbreak of the French Revolution,defenders of the Establishment like Edmund Burke extended

34 Ibid., 4: 407-408, 5: 170.35 Hume, "Of the Coalition of Parties,n Essays, i: 464-465.

14 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Hume's critique of Puritanism to cover contemporary radicalismand Dissent as well. Nor would any historian alter significantlyHume's characterization of Oliver Cromwell as an ambitious andhypocritical fanatic. To see something constructive in England'sPuritan and Cromwellian past would become the task of theVictorians.

The perception, common after the French Revolution, thatradicalism and Dissent posed a serious challenge to the HanoverianEstablishment ensured that the Puritan past would remainproblematic for the rest of the eighteenth century. Radicals andDissenters were likened to the Puritans as the excesses of theInterregnum seemed a powerful portent of what would happenshould the regime's opponents triumph once again. For apologistsof the Establishment, then, the seventeenth century provided acontext for understanding contemporary radicalism and Dissent aswell as a rhetorical strategy for combating them. In his Reflections onthe Revolution in France, for instance, Edmund Burke enlisted theStuart past in the defense of the Hanoverian regime. Replying tothe Unitarian Richard Price, who had referred to the events of1688 in order to encourage radical politics, Burke appropriatedthe Glorious Revolution for the Establishment, presenting aninterpretation that was intended to discredit a radicalism that hefelt was now shared by Whigs, Dissenters and French Revolution-aries. The legitimacy of England's institutions, Burke affirmed inhis Reflections, lay in their antiquity. England's "ancient consti-tution" had grown over the centuries as each new generationadded its wisdom to that of its predecessors, modifying existinginstitutions and practices without destroying their essentialintegrity. The Glorious Revolution had maintained this consti-tution in defiance of a king who was intent on subverting it. "TheRevolution," Burke asserted, "was made to preserve our antientindisputable laws and liberties, and that antient constitution ofgovernment which is our only security for law and liberty." TheRevolution of 1688 had initiated nothing new and Richard Price wasmistaken to argue that it had confirmed the nation's right toimpose a government of its own devising.36

36 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societiesin London Relative to that Event, ed. Conor Cruise O'Brien (Harmondsworth: PenguinBooks, 1969), 117-122. For Burke's traditionalism, see J. G. A. Pocock, "Burke and the

Politics, religion and history 15To strengthen his case, Burke drew two historical parallels. In

the first, he coupled the Glorious Revolution with the Restoration,arguing that in both instances England had found itself without aking and that both times it had found a solution to the problem inthe traditional principle of hereditary succession. To associate theRevolution with the Restoration was to deprive the events of 1688of any tendency toward innovation. In the second place, Burkeattacked the radicalism of Dissenters like Price by emphasizingtheir ties to an earlier Puritanism. What bothered Burke mostabout Price's sermon was that he heard within it the voice ofseventeenth-century Puritanism, complete with its distinctiveblend of religious enthusiasm and political democracy. BehindPrice's claim that England now enjoyed the right "to choose [its]own governors; to cashier them for misconduct; and to form agovernment for [itself]," Burke saw the same principle at workwhich had led the nation once before to put its king to death.Within Burke's rhetoric, Richard Price became indistinguishablefrom the Reverend Hugh Peters, the Puritan divine who hadpreached approvingly of the king's execution.37 When he was done,Burke had reversed Price's use of the past. The Glorious Revolutionremained a great legitimating event, but the principles it sanc-tioned were conservative, and the radicalism of Dissenters likePrice stood discredited by its association with the excesses of theCivil War and Commonwealth.

In his attack on the French revolutionaries, Burke used anargument that closely resembled Hume's criticism of the Puritans.The revolutionaries, Burke maintained, by substituting the rightsof man for tradition, had destroyed the values that he associatedwith chivalry, and in the process had severed the bonds that heldsociety together. "The age of chivalry is gone," Burke proclaimed:"Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rankand sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, thatsubordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitudeitself, the spirit of an exalted freedom."38 Just as Hume's Puritans,under the illusion of Godliness, had indulged their appetites, soBurke's revolutionaries, under the illusion of liberty, had unleashed

Ancient Constitution: A Problem in the History of Ideas," Politics, Language and Time:Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 202-232.

37 Burke, Reflections, 94-100, 106, 157-159. 38 Ibid., 170-175.

16 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

their destructive passions. In both instances the ideal was asfalse as its effects were pernicious. The Puritan's Godliness was asfar removed from true religion as the revolutionary's freedomwas from true liberty. In both cases the false ideal had under-mined those values that were necessary for preserving order.The consequence was, in England as in France, an orgy ofdestruction.

If spokesmen for the Establishment debased Puritanism in theirwar against radicalism, opposition writers did not treat it muchbetter. Even when they were inclined to judge favorably theopponents of the Stuarts, these Whig and radical historians limitedtheir praise to particular aspects of Puritanism rather thanendorsing the movement as a whole, and they certainly fell farshort of initiating a complete rehabilitation of the Puritan andCromwellian past. An adversary of the Hanoverian regime like theScotsman John Millar, whom Francis Jeffrey once described as a"decided whig" with republican sympathies,39 provides a case inpoint. Millar was not especially alarmed at the growth of contem-porary radicalism, nor was he averse to seventeenth-centuryradicalism, displaying throughout his Historical View of the EnglishGovernment, published posthumously in 1803, a fondness for repub-lican schemes of government. Though Millar acknowledged thatPuritanism could lead to political excess, he did not linger on thefact, and he never used Puritanism, after the fashion of Hume orBurke, as an argument against radical politics. Instead, he concen-trated on what he found most constructive in the religion of thePresbyterians and Independents, noting the liberal tendencies ineach. The Independents in particular, he remarked, were the firstto develop a modern concept of toleration. Denouncing religiousestablishments as "a kind of persecution," they became spokesmenfor "religious freedom" and the "rights of private judgment." Alldenominations, according to their principles, should be regardedas equals and the community should be "encouraged to followthe dictates of reason and conscience." As a political party, theIndependents inclined toward republicanism, their belief thatthe congregation should appoint the clergy finding a counterpart in

39 [Francis Jeffrey], "Millar's View of the English Government" Edinburgh Review, 3 (October,1803): 158-159.

Politics, religion and history 17the democratic principle that the community should elect allpolitical officers.40

To point out the liberal potential in Independency, however,hardly amounted to a rehabilitation of England's Puritan past, forwhat seemed promising in theory became corrupt in practice.Millar conceded that the early Puritans, regardless of theirprinciples, were as intolerant as any other denomination. Hefurther noted that before they could fulfill their promise and createa truly popular government, they had fallen under the dominationof Oliver Cromwell, "an extraordinary genius, utterly devoid of allprinciple," who used the Independents to destroy the monarchy andintroduce "an odious species of despotism." Cromwell's character,Millar wrote, was "universally known," implying that his assess-ment of the Protector would not deviate from the norm establishedby Hume. Millar's Cromwell was an enthusiast, inelegant and rude,incapable of expressing himself clearly, yet able to act decisivelyand with cunning shrewdness. Originally sincere in his religiousbeliefs, he soon became a hypocrite, hiding his base ambitionsbehind a carapace of piety. "Certain it is," Millar concluded, "thatthe consummate hypocrisy of Cromwell was the great engine bywhich he procured the confidence of his whole party, and obtainedan ascendancy over all their movements." The execution of the kingwas inexpedient, the republic set up after his death was imperfect,based as it was on an inadequate representation, and its one lastingeffect was to prepare the ground for Cromwell's usurpation anddespotism.41

The most radical challenge to Hume's interpretation of theseventeenth century came from Catharine Macaulay. A republicanwhose History of England appeared between 1763 and 1781, Macaulayintended her work to rescue England's republican past from theaspersions cast on it by Hume and others. As expected from anoutspoken critic of Hanoverian corruption, she praised theopposition to the Stuarts, defended the right of Parliament to wage

40 J o h n M i l l a r , An Historical View of the English Government, from the Settlement of the Saxons inBritain to the Revolution in 1688 (London: J. Mawman, 1803), 3: 126, 130-133, 140-141,290-291. For Millar, see Duncan Forbes, "'Scientific' Whiggism: Adam Smith and JohnMillar," Cambridge Journal, 7 (1953-1954): 660-670, and William C. Lehman, John Millarof Glasgow, 1735-1801: His Life and Thought and His Contributions to Sociological Analysis(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, i960).

41 Millar, Historical View, 3: 144-147, 298-301, 323-325, 328-329, 331-341, 360-362.

18 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

war on the king, and vindicated the Commonwealth, pointing outthat it had abolished a "tyranny of more than five hundred" years,created a republic rivaling those of the ancients, and assertedEngland's prominence in the world. Its administration was "justand impartial," its management of the nation's resources wasskillful and frugal, and its deliberations showed no signs of corrup-tion. Seeking a cause of the republic's failure, Macaulay targetedOliver Cromwell. His rise to power, she explained, echoing Hume,was a result of his duplicity, selfishness and ambition, and hisrule was far from exemplary: he imposed a military dictatorship,governed arbitrarily, ignored Parliamentary practice, violated theprinciples of justice, and persecuted at one time or another everyreligious denomination.42

When she examined the seventeenth century's religiouscontroversies, Macaulay, like Millar, tended to focus on theconstructive side of Puritanism. In answer to Hume, she pointedout that the Puritan opposition to Laud's innovations was far fromfrivolous given the close connection of Church and state, and likeMillar she admired the Independents for their early understandingof toleration.43 And yet, despite the approving tenor of theseobservations, there is little indication that either Macaulay orMillar ever intended to rehabilitate Puritanism outside of itsimmediate connection with republicanism or the political oppo-sition to the Stuarts. Neither historian, for instance, addressed theissue of Puritan piety, and until someone did, Hume's charge thatPuritanism was a form of hypocrisy concealing selfish ambitioncould not be answered. Indeed, there is some evidence thatMacaulay was as uneasy with Puritanism as was Hume, consideringreligious enthusiasm to be incompatible with republican virtue.Cromwell, who destroyed the Commonwealth in order to satisfy hisambition, was for Macaulay an "enthusiast of the first form" with a"highly puritanical" religious faith, whereas disinterested publicservants like Sir John Eliot were not.44 Above all, Macaulay and

42 C a t h a r i n e M a c a u l a y , The History of England from the Accession of James I to the Elevation of theHouse of Hanover, third edition (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1769), 1: v-xxi, 3: 39-41,4: 406—409, 5: 91-103, 196—198, 203. For a biography of Macaulay, see Bridget Hill, TheRepublican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1992).

43 M a c a u l a y , History of England, 2: 54 -55 , 4: 251-254.44 Ibid., 2: 77-78, 4: 159.

Politics, religion and history 19Millar understood Puritanism more narrowly than would theirVictorian successors. They tended to speak most often of Indepen-dents and Presbyterians, religious factions important because oftheir support for one political party or another. When they used theterm Puritan, it designated little more than the broader categoryencompassing the two denominations. To see in Puritanism alarger social or cultural movement embodying the spirit of the agewas simply beyond them. To describe Puritanism, after the fashionof Carlyle, as "the last of all our Heroisms," to find in Puritanisman explanation for the Civil War or to view it as one of theformative forces in English history would have been inconceivableto any eighteenth-century historian.

The Puritan and Cromwellian past would remain an uncomfort-able topic from the period of the French Revolution until well intothe opening decades of the nineteenth century. The apparentsimilarities between Puritanism and radical Dissent, between theCivil War and the French Revolution were too close to admitthe Puritans into the acceptable past. When in the 1790s CharlesJames Fox, the leader of the Whigs, turned to history in order torestore the credibility of his party, he was careful to dissociate itfrom the disturbing aspects of the Civil War. His History of James theSecond, published posthumously in 1808 and recognized as a state-ment of Whig principles, made no mention of Puritanism andblamed Cromwell for the excesses of the 1640s, thereby removingfrom the Parliamentary opposition the responsibility for executingthe king. Rather than founding the reputation of the Whigs on theuncertain heritage of the 1640s, Fox turned to the unimpeachableRevolution of 1688, planning a history that would have appropriatedthe Revolution for the opposition by demonstrating that the realdanger to the constitution had always emanated from the crown.45

Even after Waterloo and the collapse of the French Revolution,Cromwell and the Puritans continued to represent a dangerousprecedent. When Henry Hallam attempted in the 1820s toreconsider what it meant to be a Whig, he too kept his distancefrom them. Like Hume, Hallam abandoned the Long Parliamentafter its initial period of reform, believing that it had succumbedto irresponsible passion. Like Fox, he chose to construct his

Charles James Fox, A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second (Philadelphia:Abraham Small, 1808), 4, 7, 10-11.

20 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

moderate Whiggism, a compound of the party's Burkean andFoxite traditions, on the legacy of the Glorious Revolution.

During the next fifty years, however, these historical perceptionswould change considerably. One of the Victorians' great historio-graphical achievements was to reverse the prejudice againstCromwell and the Puritans. Already by the 1820s the young ThomasBabington Macaulay, writing in the Whig Edinburgh Review, hadplaced Cromwell on a par with Washington, challenging Fox'sjudgment that Washington was the greater statesman because hehad refrained from imposing a military dictatorship when placed atthe head of a victorious revolutionary army. By the 1840s, ThomasCarlyle's Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell had refuted Hume'sverdict that the Protector's collected utterances would make themost nonsensical book ever. By the 1880s, Samuel RawsonGardiner, building on a generation of scholarship, had describedPuritanism as a great moral force, one of the two formativeinfluences in English history. The cumulative effect of this shiftingopinion was, by the 1890s, to transform Cromwell into something ofa national hero, his statue now prominently displayed outside theHouses of Parliament. The reasons for this change in historicalperception are not hard to find: as the century progressed, thecircumstances that had once made the memory of Cromwelland the Puritans seem so dangerous largely disappeared. Therevolutionary threat, which had alarmed Burke and others, steadilydiminished as the reform acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 laid thegroundwork for English democracy. Nor were sectarian con-troversies as vehement as they had once been. The Dissenters hadbecome increasingly integrated into English society - most oftheir outstanding grievances had been redressed by the 1880s -and Anglicans began to regard unbelief as a greater menace thanChristian Dissent. In these changed circumstances the Puritan pasttook on new meaning.

England's acceptance of its Puritan and Cromwellian heritagewas one manifestation of its transition from an Anglican to asecular state. Beginning with the repeal of the Test andCorporation Acts in 1828 and Catholic emancipation in 1829,measures which broke open the Anglican constitution, andcontinuing through most of the century, England graduallyrelinquished its Anglican exclusiveness. As the character of thestate changed, so the conviction that the nation's history must

Politics, religion and history 21legitimate an official Anglicanism gave way to an interpretation ofthe past that was more broadly national. The writing of history waspart of this process. Early in the century, Whigs like Hallam andMacaulay used the past in order to argue the case for grantingpolitical equality to Catholics and Dissenters. In their historicalwritings, they reversed the rhetoric uttered by those defenders ofthe Anglican constitution who had regarded religious uniformity asa necessary precondition for political stability. The lessons of theCivil War, Macaulay pointed out, demonstrated that intolerance,and especially the use of coercion to ensure uniformity, had actuallyled to rebellion. At about the same time, Dissenting historiansbegan to stress the positive impact which Puritanism had made onthe development of modern England.

Opponents of Protestant Dissent had typically alluded to theexcesses of the Puritans in order to expose the destructive potentialwithin all forms of religious or political nonconformity. In thedecades after Waterloo, however, Dissenters began to acknowledgetheir own history and to use it more constructively, emphasizing thePuritan contribution to the development of political and religiousliberty. Major histories written by Dissenters like William Godwin,John Forster and Robert Vaughan presented Puritanism as animportant force behind the emergence of a liberal England that wasnow able to accommodate sectarian diversity. As the foundations ofthe Anglican constitution began to collapse after the repeal of theTest and Corporation Acts, Dissenters used the Puritan past tolegitimate religious reform, interpreting it as the culmination ofthe liberal tendencies inherent in England's Protestant heritage.In the process, they affirmed the efforts of the Puritans, and byassociation themselves, to bring these liberal tendencies to fruition.Within this interpretive framework, Cromwell came to epitomizethe religiously inspired activist who tried his best in unfavorablecircumstances to create a society founded on religious tolerationand civil liberty. To make their case, Dissenters drew heavily onCarlyle's edition of Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, a work whichthey believed had finally put to rest the accusation that Cromwellwas an ambitious hypocrite.

The accommodation of Dissent during the nineteenth centurywas part of a larger process of nation building that had as one ofits aims the removal of sectarian divisions. The writing of historycontributed to this process since the religious controversies which

22 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

threatened to obstruct national politics had originated in theseventeenth century. To construct an interpretation of the pastthat was national instead of sectarian therefore became a liberalimperative. Macaulay's history of the Glorious Revolution andGardiner's many volumes on the Civil War, books which defined thecontours of the Stuart past for generations to come, presentedinterpretations stressing the inclusion of all religious parties. Outof Gardiner's work in particular emerged a vision of the pastemphasizing the equal contributions that both Puritan andAnglican had made to the building of modern England. This liberalreworking of the past finally brought Cromwell and the Puritansinto the realm of the acceptable.

CHAPTER I

Henry Hallam and early nineteenth-centuryWhiggism

When the Due de Broglie, visiting London amid the excitementover the first Reform Bill, wanted advice on how to judge theimpending measure, he sought out the Whig historian HenryHallam. He was, Broglie thought, "the greatest living publicist inEngland, if not the greatest she had ever possessed," a clear signof how easily reputations rise and fall.1 In the years before 1832,Hallam was known for two considerable works of history, a View ofthe State of Europe during the Middle Ages and the Constitutional Historyof England, published in 1818 and 1827.2 Recent scholarship had paidlittle attention to Hallam. His books are long and dull, fallingeasily into Carlyle's category of "dry-as-dust." And yet they repayscrutiny, especially for the insights they provide into the ideologicaldebates of the period after Waterloo. For Hallam's two mostimportant works were part of a wider effort to reconstruct the Whigparty following the death of Charles James Fox in 1806.

The Foxite opposition to Pitt during the French Revolution and thewars against Napoleon imparted to the Whigs a political traditionemphasizing constitutional balance and aristocratic government.Central to this tradition was the notion that England possessed abalanced constitution in which the aristocracy, dominating bothhouses of Parliament, would play the pivotal role. Though consti-tutional balance could be upset by either the crown or the people,

1 Personal Recollections of the Late Due de Broglie, 1785-1820, trans, and ed. Raphael Ledos deBeaufort (London: Ward and Downey, 1887), 2: 514.

2 Hallam wrote one other major work, an Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth,Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, 4 vols. (London: John Murray, 1837-1839), an exam-ination of which lies outside the scope of this chapter.

23

24 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

the Foxites were inclined to fear encroachments by the king and hisministers, a distrust of royal influence that explains their long-standing commitment to economical reform as a way of restrictingpatronage and preserving constitutional equipoise. As the crownbecame less sinister in the opening decades of the nineteenthcentury, however, this preoccupation with the constitution andcorruption began to appear behind the times. The Foxite beliefin aristocratic government was likewise open to the charge ofanachronism. The Whigs had always clothed their aristocraticexclusiveness in the rhetoric of popular sovereignty. The rights ofthe people, they asserted, required protection, but not by meansof the public's direct participation in government. The Whigmagnates, who had secured these rights from the crown at theGlorious Revolution and whose landed independence and historicrole in government would ensure moderation, had an obligationto act on behalf of the people. Believing that the principal threat toconstitutional balance emanated from the crown, the Foxites werewilling to prop up the constitution's popular side by grantingreasonable concessions. With the growth of radicalism, however,the aristocracy's claim to be acting in the people's interest lostmuch of its appeal as the middle and working classes became intenton using their own power to acquire more extensive rights.3

Fox's death removed the one personality capable of keeping theWhigs together, and after 1806 the party began to lose coherence.To distinguish themselves from the Tories, the Whigs had usuallypresented themselves as friends of the people. But the emergenceof an energetic radical movement in the years after Waterloo madethis strategy increasingly problematic. In the first place, the Whigshad done little to substantiate their commitment to reform. Theiraccomplishments during the Ministry of All the Talents had beendisappointing- apart from the abolition of the slave trade in 1806,no significant reforms had been passed -which made their boast of

3 For the Foxite tradition in the early nineteenth century, see: Peter Mandler, AristocraticGovernment in the Age of Reform: Whigs and Liberals, 1830-1852 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1990), 13-22. Richard Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion, and Reform,1830-1841 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 28-36. Leslie Mitchell, Holland House (London:Duckworth, 1980), 39-50. Abraham D. Kriegel, "Liberty and Whiggery in EarlyNineteenth-Century England," Journal of Modern History, 52 (1980): 253-278. J. R.Dinwiddy, "Charles James Fox and the People," History, 55 (1970): 353-359. AustinMitchell, The Whigs in Opposition, 1815-1830 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 7-24.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 25being a popular party sound increasingly hollow.4 In the secondplace, the rise of an active radicalism made it difficult for the Whigsto embrace a legitimate reform program without alarming con-servatives in the party. This was particularly true of Parliamentaryreform. Grey, leading the Foxites after 1806, believed the best wayto defeat the radicals would be for the Whigs to win the public'sconfidence by promoting some degree of Parliamentary reform. Butevery time he endorsed such a measure, no matter how cautious, herisked losing the support of conservatives. If, on the other hand, heabandoned reform in order to appease his party's right wing, thenhe risked driving the more progressive Whigs into the ranks of theradicals. The result was an indecisive leadership that satisfied noone and failed to give the party direction.5

Encumbered with a Foxite legacy whose relevance for the newcentury was far from certain, and burdened with a weak leadership,the Whigs grew steadily ineffective after 1806. Eventually the partywould reassert itself. Taking advantage of the disruption in Englishpolitics caused by the reemergence of the Catholic issue in 1826, theWhigs would attain office in 1830 and carry the first Reform Actin 1832. Historians may differ over which groups were responsiblefor reconstructing the party, but they agree that the Whigsexperienced an ideological reorientation in the decades before 1830.William Thomas has suggested that by 1815 a number of"professional men" had joined the party alongside the aristocratsand were beginning to make their influence felt. Politicians likeBrougham, Mackintosh, Romilly, Horner and Jeffrey, embracingthe new science of political economy and often trained in theScottish universities, were more liberal than their aristocraticpatrons. They were lawyers or businessmen who urged the Whigs tobecome responsive to interests outside Parliament in order to gaina more democratic following in manufacturing and commercialareas. They were willing to work with moderate radicals likeBurdett in an effort to make the party truly popular but still distinctfrom extremists like Cobbett, Cartwright or Hunt.6

4 A. D. Harvey, "The Ministry of All the Talents: The Whigs in Office, February 1806 toMarch 1807," Historical Journal, 15 (1972): 645-648.

5 E. A. Smith, Lord Grey, 1764-1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 36, 179-189, 204-221.6 William Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817-1841

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 46-57. Biancamaria Fontana, Rethinking the Politics ofCommercial Society: The Edinburgh Review 1802-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

26 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Hallam's work as a historian should be placed in the context ofthis attempt to revive and redirect the Whig party in the decadesbefore 1830. Though he never sat in Parliament, preferring thepursuit of literature to active politics, his Middle Ages andConstitutional History were both political works that addressed thecrisis of identity facing the Whigs. His allegiance to the partyhas never been questioned. A frequent visitor to Holland Houseand Bowood, he could count among his friends many prominentmembers of the party. Echoing generations of Whigs, Hallam oncesaid that his standard in politics was a "well-ordered liberty," orderensuring the absence of anarchy, liberty the absence of tyranny.7Like most Whigs, he supported the repeal of the Test andCorporation Acts, Catholic emancipation, reform of the IrishChurch, reductions in taxation in order to ameliorate the conditionof the people and restore their confidence in Parliament, and theabolition of West Indian slavery and the slave trade.8 We can alsoplace Hallam more precisely among the "professional men" ofthe party. Like many of them, he was trained in the law, practicingas a barrister on the Oxford circuit, and he was a recipient of

Press, 1985), 112-185, and John Clive, Scotch Reviewers: The Edinburgh Review, 1802-1813(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), have examined the role of theEdinburgh Review in articulating the liberal ideology of these professionals. Though hisargument has a different emphasis, see Peter Mandler's observations on the tensionbetween liberal and Foxite principles in the Whig party before 1830. Aristocratic Govern-ment, 36-64.

In a series of articles, Ellis Archer Wasson has discounted the influence of theseprofessionals on the reconstruction of the Whig party and has focused attention insteadon a group of young aristocrats - Milton, Tavistock and Althorp - who embraced Parlia-mentary reform in the years after Peterloo. Richard Brent has recently extendedWasson's argument by stressing the importance of religion and placing a number ofliberal Anglicans, of whom Lord John Russell was the most prominent, alongsideWasson's Evangelical young Whigs. Though Wasson and Brent have shown that thepicture may be more complicated than the one drawn by Thomas and others, they havenot eliminated the importance of the "professional men" and the Edinburgh Review inshaping Whig ideology. Ellis Archer Wasson, "The Great Whigs and ParliamentaryReform, 1809-1830," Journal of British Studies, 24 (1985): 434-464, "The Spirit of Reform,1832 and 1867," Albion, 12 (1980): 164-174, "The Coalitions of 1827 a n d t n e Crisis of WhigLeadership," HistoricalJournal, 20 (1977): 587-606. Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics, 36-64.

1 Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. "Hallam, Henry (1777-1859)." Francis Horner toHallam (22 July 1815) and Hallam to Francis Horner (26 July 1815), Memoirs and Corre-spondence of Francis Horner, M.P., ed. Leonard Horner (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1853),2: 261, 263.

* Hallam to John Whishaw (28 April and 2 June 1828), The "Pope" of Holland House: Selectionsfrom the Correspondence of John Whishaw and His Friends, 1813-1840, ed. Lady Seymour(London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1906), 320-321, 322-324. Hallam to Francis Horner (19 March1816), Memoirs of Francis Horner, 2: 317-318.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 27

aristocratic patronage. During the Ministry of All the Talents,when Lansdowne was chancellor of the exchequer, Hallam wasappointed a commissioner of stamps, a sinecure that freed himfrom his legal career and enabled him to devote his time toscholarship.9 Finally, Hallam was friendly with other professionals,particularly Francis Jeffrey and Francis Horner - who consideredHallam "one of us" — and like them he was an early contributor tothe Edinburgh Review, writing on history, literature and politics.10

Placing Hallam among these Whig professionals serves as areminder that, taken as a group, their views were not uniform, butencompassed a wide variety of positions. They were not all staunchadvocates of reform, like Brougham or Whitbread, or necessarily atodds with the older Foxites within the party. For, on the issue ofParliamentary reform, Hallam became increasingly cautious as thenew century opened. Lacking the necessary evidence, we can onlyguess at the reasons for his emerging conservatism.11 But it seemsplausible that the excesses of the French Revolution and theencouragement which events in France had given to radicalism inBritain and Ireland had the same effect on Hallam as they hadon others of his generation, making him wary of widening thefranchise.

Whatever Hallam's views on the French Revolution, he soonbecame a resolute opponent of Bonaparte, believing that the waragainst France was vital to Britain's security and expressingdispleasure at the Treaty of Amiens.12 Hallam's aversion toNapoleon and radical reform became most apparent in his reaction

9 DNB. Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography, s.v. "Hallam, Henry."10 Francis Horner to Hallam (2 August 1805), Memoirs of Francis Horner, 1: 304. For Hallam's

contributions to the Edinburgh Review, see the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals,1824-igoo, ed. Walter Houghton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966-1989), 1: 922.

11 Writing to his friend Webb Seymour in 1802, Hallam noted that in the interval since1798, when they had both left Oxford, his political opinions had diverged from WebbSeymour's. Since Webb Seymour went on to take up residence in Edinburgh, becomeimmersed in Scottish philosophy, extend his patronage to liberals like Francis Hornerand help found the Edinburgh Review, we can assume that his politics remained fairlyliberal. Hallam's position, it seems fair to conclude, must have become conservativerelative to Webb Seymour's. Hallam to Lord Webb Seymour (27 May 1802), LadyGuendolen Ramsden, Correspondence of Two Brothers: Edward Adolphus, Eleventh Duke ofSomerset, and His Brother Lord Webb Seymour, 1800 to i8ig and After (London: Longmans,Green and Co., 1906), 60.

12 Hallam to Miss Hallam ([24 May 1802]), Henry Hallam papers, Christ Church, Oxford,9: 10. Hallam, "Biographical Notice of Lord Webb Seymour," Memoirs of Francis Horner, 1:478.

28 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

to the anti-aristocratic eulogy of the Spanish people that Broughamand Jeffrey published in the Edinburgh Review in 1808. Occasioned bythe Spanish insurrection against French domination, the articlecalled for "radical improvements" in the English constitution andexpressed the hope that events in Spain would revive the reformmovement in Britain just as the French Revolution had in 1789.Brougham and Jeffrey ended their tribute to Spanish democracywith the suggestion that Britain negotiate with Bonaparte in orderto secure the best possible terms for the insurgents, a recom-mendation that would have led to a victory for revolution in Spainand precluded the total defeat of France. Hallam, finding thepolitical tenor of the article objectionable, eventually severed hisconnection with the Review.n After the Hundred Days, when someWhigs were inclined to treat Bonaparte as the legitimate choice ofthe French nation, Hallam argued strenuously for the restorationof the Bourbons.14

Hallam's response to the Hundred Days provides a goodindication of his position in the party since Napoleon's return toFrance in 1815 nearly split the Whigs along lines similar to those of1794. Foxites like Grey and Holland, liberals like Horner andAlthorp, radical Whigs like Whitbread all opposed a resumption ofthe war against France and the restoration of the Bourbons afterWaterloo. Hallam's dislike of Bonaparte and his championing ofthe Bourbons would have allied him with the Grenvilles, who wouldthrow their support behind the Tories in 1817, and the conservativeFitzwilliam, one of the most uncompromising opponents of Parlia-mentary reform in the 1820s.15 Indeed, Hallam's arguments in favorof the Bourbons resembled those of William Elliot, a recipient ofFitzwilliam's patronage. According to Hallam, the only way toachieve "tranquillity and permanence of government" in Francewould be to "preserve the hereditary title of her sovereign." As heexplained: "The moral securities of government are strict religious

13 [Henry Brougham and Francis Jeffrey], "Don Pedro Cevallos on the French Usurpationof Spain," Edinburgh Review, 13 (October, 1808): 215-234. For the controversy which thearticle generated, see Clive, Scotch Reviewers, 110-113. For Hallam's response, see PeterClark, Henry Hallam (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982), 7-8.

14 Hallam to Francis Horner (26 July 1815) and (19 March 1816), Memoirs of Francis Horner, 2:264-265, 318-319.

15 L. Mitchell, Holland House, 247-259. A. Mitchell, Whigs in Opposition, 82-92. E. A. Smith,Whig Principles and Party Politics: Earl Fitzwilliam and the Whig Party, 1748-1833 (Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1975), 346-372.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 29principles of obligation, sober and steady habits in domesticlife, and the point of honour in keeping promises. All these aremiserably weak in France; and I see no means so likely to restorethem, as the habit of paying obedience to government as legitimate,and even as prescriptive." Whereas liberals and radicals spoke thelanguage of self-determination, referring to the right of the Frenchpeople to choose their governors, Hallam spoke of order based onreligion and submission to prescriptive authority, a Burkeanrhetoric pleasing to conservatives.16

In the years after 1806, then, as others within the party began toorient the Whigs toward popular reform, Hallam urged caution.Aware of how easily revolution could lead first to anarchy and thento despotism, he warned that in England reform must proceedslowly, in conformity with the nation's longstanding traditions.Reviving in his histories the notion of the balanced constitution, hewould demonstrate that good government depended on a delicatebalance, maintained by an aristocratic Parliament, which theTories' encouragement of executive power and the radicals'advocacy of democracy threatened to upset. Here was an argumentin favor of the unreformed constitution which would clearlydistinguish the Whigs from their adversaries on both the right andthe left. Without opposing reform on principle, it set limits on thekinds of change that were acceptable. So long as a given reformcould be shown to enhance the public good without disruptingconstitutional balance, then it should be encouraged. True to thisreasoning, Hallam's histories provided powerful arguments insupport of Catholic emancipation and the repeal of the Test andCorporation Acts. But a measure such as the Reform Act of 1832,Hallam thought, should be resisted because it would tilt theconstitution too much toward the side of democracy.

11

The most important ideological characteristic of Hallam's twoworks of history was their reassertion of a Foxite constitutionalism.One idea, more than any other, sustained his political andhistorical thinking: "The government of England," he wrote in the

16 Hallam to Francis Horner (26 July 1815), Memoirs of Francis Horner, 2: 264. For Elliot'sposition, see A. Mitchell, Whigs in Opposition, 91.

30 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

opening sentence of his Constitutional History, "in all times recordedby history, has been one of those mixed or limited monarchies."17

According to this formula, England enjoyed a mixed government ofking, Lords and Commons, in which the right to govern was sharedequally among the estates of the realm. The constitution's threecomponents operated in balance, each checking the excesses towhich the others were prone, and performing specific functionsdefined by law and past practice. As long as the constitutionremained in equilibrium, good government would prevail, but oncethe balance was disrupted, tyranny or anarchy would triumph.Underlying this argument was the conviction that power wasnaturally rapacious and dangerous to liberty unless checked andbalanced. Taken together, these ideas formed the celebrateddoctrine of the separation of powers, which had entered England'spolitical vocabulary long before Hallam published his ConstitutionalHistory. Charles I had referred to the balanced constitution in orderto warn Parliament that any attempt to govern without hisparticipation would result in disorder and imbalance. After theRestoration and throughout the eighteenth century, the doctrinebecame a frequent assumption of both country and court polemics.Country writers, challenging the court's use of patronage, arguedthat placemen, pensions and standing armies destroyed theequilibrium of the constitution by undermining the independenceof the House of Commons. Apologists for the court, on the otherhand, pointed out that the system of patronage was a necessarycheck on the power of the Commons. By the early nineteenthcentury, the doctrine of the balanced constitution was such a wellestablished component of political debate that it providedthe Whigs with an easy justification for their efforts to restrict thepower of the crown.18

17 Henry Hallam, The Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Deathof George II (New York: W.J. Widdleton, 1871), 1: 17.

18 For the formulation and heritage of this theory in both its British and American contexts,see: Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age ofWalpole(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), 137-169. J. G. A. Pocock, TheMachiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 361-366, 401-407. Bernard Bailyn, TheIdeological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1967), 34-77. Stefan Collini, Donald Winch and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics:A Study in Nineteenth Century Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1983) > 55-57-

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 31Also important for Hallam's political thinking was his belief that

the true end of government was to promote the public good. To onetrained in English law, the precept that good government meantlegal government was self-evident, and this was the liberal principlethat Hallam saw prevail in England after the Revolution of 1688.The purpose of law, he argued, was to protect the freedom of thesubject, to guarantee his right to property and expression and tosecure him against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. For a nationto prosper, then, its government must abide by laws such as these,which respect the rights and privileges of the people. Like otherWhigs, Hallam identified the nation's interests with Parliament;through its representatives in the House of Commons, Englandmade its needs known, and to ensure that the administration metthese needs, the king and his ministers must be held accountable tothe Commons. Any monarchy that saw itself as absolute andclaimed a divine sanction or indefeasible right, placed itself abovethe law and beyond the reach of Parliament, and was thus incom-patible with the public good. In essence, this had been the case withthe Stuarts. During the seventeenth century, Hallam argued, thosekings had attempted to render their authority absolute, and onlywith the Glorious Revolution and the resulting alteration in the lineof succession was the power of the monarch made subordinate tothe law and dependent on the House of Commons. By granting thecrown to William of Orange, the Convention Parliament made itclear that "the rights of the actual monarch" emanated from "theparliament and the people." What the nation gave, it could takeaway; if William or his heirs ever violated the fundamental rule ofgovernment and acted against the public good, then the nation,through its representatives in Parliament, could revoke his title tothe throne.19

Hallam based his interpretation of the Stuart past on thepremise that a mixed monarchy, in which the rights of Parliamentwere clearly defined, had existed in England long before theseventeenth century. In his Middle Ages he sought the origins of thisconstitution, entering into a controversy that had once generatedconsiderable excitement, especially as it concerned the House ofCommons. During the seventeenth century the contest betweenking and Parliament had made it imperative to determine on what

19 Hallam, Constitutional History, 3: 94-96.

32 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

historical grounds, if any, the Parliamentary cause stood. Wishingto uphold the claims of the House of Commons, theorists of thecommon law had appealed to the ancient constitution, arguing thatthe Stuart kings had no right to deprive Parliament of its privilegessince these had existed unaltered from time immemorial. After theRevolution of 1688, references to the ancient liberties of English-men, to their immemorial constitution and free Anglo-Saxoninstitutions became a frequent strategy in the opposition writingsof Bolingbroke and others. During the late seventeenth century,however, the royalist historian Robert Brady sought to refutethese arguments by demonstrating that the origin of the modernParliament, with its Lords and Commons, was not rooted inEngland's Anglo-Saxon past, but was a more recent occurrence.Denying altogether the existence of the ancient constitution, heasserted that England's feudal kings had virtually createdParliament after the Conquest when they summoned to theircouncils not only their tenants in chief, but representatives of thecounties and boroughs as well. Whatever privileges the House ofCommons may have enjoyed, he reasoned, it did so only with theking's consent.20

By the time Hallam's Middle Ages appeared, more than a centurylater, this controversy over the origins of the constitution had lostmuch of its urgency. Where radical thinkers had once appealed tothe ancient constitution, demanding a restoration of the democracywhich they found in an idealized Anglo-Saxon past, they were nowmore likely to base their polemics on theories of natural rights orBenthamite utilitarianism.21 Since political controversy had movedaway from such purely historical questions as which came first,Parliament or king, Hallam believed he could deal impartially withEngland's medieval past. In general, he followed the lines of Brady's

20 For a discussion of this controversy, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and theFeudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1957). See also Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle, 127-136,177-181, and Alan Craig Houston, Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England andAmerica (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 70, 75-77. For the continuation ofthe controversy into the eighteenth century and beyond, see R. J. Smith, The GothicBequest: Medieval Institutions in British Thought, 1688-1863 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1987).

21 For radical uses of the Anglo-Saxon past, see Christopher Hill, "The Norman Yoke,"Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the iyth Century(New York: Schocken Books, 1964), 50-122.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 33argument, dispensing with the ancient constitution and placing thebeginnings of Parliament after the Conquest.22

Hallam began his Middle Ages with an investigation into theAnglo-Saxon past and, though impressed with the continuities inEnglish history, he made no mention of either the ancient consti-tution or the immemorial rights and liberties of Englishmen. Hestated explicitly that the Witenagemot was not equivalent to themodern Parliament since there was no system of representationand since the "inferior freemen" played no role in its affairs. Norcould he uncover sufficient evidence to suppose that the countycourts involved trial by jury. He refused to believe that the Anglo-Saxon past represented a golden age prior to the establishment offeudalism in which all Englishmen lived as equals, concludingthat "much of the intrinsic character of the feudal relation"was probably present in Anglo-Saxon England, "though in a lessmature and systematic shape than it assumed after the Normanconquest."23 With arguments such as these, he discredited whatremained of the radical rhetoric which had attempted to justifyreform on the grounds that it would return the nation to itsoriginal constitutional purity.

Having dismissed the ancient constitution as apocryphal, Hallamthen located the origins of its modern counterpart in the age of thePlantagenets. The granting of Magna Carta represented "the firsteffort towards a legal government," and in the early nineteenthcentury it was still "the key-stone of English liberty." It guaranteedthe personal property and liberty of all freemen by protecting themagainst arbitrary arrest and spoliation, and in this provision Hallamsaw the principle of habeas corpus. The Magna Carta furtherimplied that Parliamentary consent was necessary for all forms oftaxation, although eighty years would pass before this practicegained explicit recognition in the Confirmation of the Chartersenacted by Edward I.24 The dominant feature of England'snineteenth-century constitution was its successful combination ofking, Lords and Commons, and Hallam traced the origin of thisarrangement to the reigns of Henry III and Edward I. The earliestindisputable examples of county and borough representation

22 H e n r y H a l l a m , View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, s e v e n t h e d i t i o n (Par is :Baudry's European Library, 1840), 2: 58, 79-80.

23 Ibid., 2: 4-23. 24 Ibid., 2: 37-39, 56-58.

34 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

occurred under Henry III, and his successor, Edward I, continuedthe practice on a regular basis. By the time of Edward III, bothhouses had made clear that it was illegal for the king to raise moneyor alter the laws without their consent, and the Commons hadestablished its right "to inquire into public abuses, and to impeachpublic counsellors."25 From then on, the rights and privileges ofParliament had steadily grown. Englishmen of the early nineteenthcentury, Hallam concluded, enjoyed few "essential privileges" or"fundamental securities against arbitrary power" that were notalready in existence by the first of the Tudors.26

Hallam rarely spoke theoretically about the process of history,but at one moment in the Middle Ages he entered into a dispute withthe Scottish historian John Millar which provides some insight intohis views on how institutions, especially the law, grow and change.At issue was the Anglo-Saxon practice of frank-pledge, a customwhereby the friends and relatives of an accused person were held assureties in order to guarantee that the accused would stand trialand, if convicted, comply with the terms of his sentence. In this way,Anglo-Saxon law made the community responsible for the conductof each of its members. To account for the origin of this practice,the philosophical Millar had proposed that all societies, Anglo-Saxon or otherwise, developed according to a universal plan andthat customs such as frank-pledge were characteristic of one stagein this process. To corroborate his theory, he had described thecustoms of various other societies, hoping to prove that they tooused procedures resembling frank-pledge. Hallam, however,rejected Millar's universal plan as mere speculation. Frank-pledgefor him was uniquely Anglo-Saxon, having evolved over many yearsas the English kings attempted to deal with the problems posed bytheir rude and barbarous subjects. An initial practice of making theaccused post bail was gradually modified as new circumstancesarose until the fully developed custom of frank-pledge emerged. Aseach new modification was shown to work, it became part ofthe custom, and in this manner England's laws came to embody thecollective wisdom and experience of many generations.27 When

25 Ibid., 2: 56, 58-70, 75-82, 86-98. 26 Ibid., 2: 205.27 Ibid., 2: 15-18. John Millar, An Historical View of the English Government, from the Settlement of

the Saxons in Britain to the Revolution in 1688 (London: J. Mawman, 1803), 1: 189-199. ForMillar, see Duncan Forbes, "'Scientific' Whiggism: Adam Smith and John Millar,"Cambridge Journal, 7 (1953-1954): 660-670, and William C. Lehman,/0^n Millar of Glasgow,

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 35

Hallam referred to the law in these terms, he was hardly sayinganything new. Seventeenth-century legal thinkers like Coke orHale had long before worked out a theory of the common law whichascribed its value to the combined wisdom of the judges and lawyerswho had created it, and these ideas received further elaborationin the eighteenth century when Burke, in his Reflections on theRevolution in France, argued that England's political institutionswere superior because they were deeply rooted in tradition, havinggrown over the ages as each new generation added its experiencesto those of its predecessors.28 Hallam's Middle Ages thus representedthe continuation into the nineteenth century of a tradition ofpolitical thinking based on a respect for the historical processthat stretched back, through Burke's Reflections, well into theseventeenth.

In an early letter to his friend Lord Webb Seymour, Hallam onceremarked that he had rejected the type of philosophy commonlypracticed in Scotland for a more English way of thinking. Yearslater, answering Webb Seymour's accusation that his Middle Ageswas a work lacking philosophy, Hallam replied that in fact therewas philosophy in his history, even though Webb Seymour, with hisScottish leanings, had not recognized it as such.29 Considered inlight of his criticisms of Millar, these comments suggest thatHallam deliberately rejected those universalist notions of develop-ment favored by the Scottish historians, preferring instead a view ofthe historical process rooted in the English tradition of the commonlaw. Such a choice was perfectly consistent with his own legaltraining and suggests that Hallam, eschewing the more radicalapproach of Millar, was attempting to put forth an alternativeWhig account of the English past which was compatible with theconservative traditionalism of thinkers such as Burke.

1J35-1801: His Life and Thought and His Contributions to Sociological Analysis (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, i960). For the developmental views of the Scottishhistorians, see J. W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 10-16.

28 For an analysis of the relationship between the seventeenth-century common lawtheorists and Burke, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, 36,171-173, 241-243, and the same author's "Burke and the Ancient Constitution: a Problemin the History of Ideas," Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History(New York: Atheneum, 1971), 202-232.

29 Hallam to Lord Webb Seymour (27 May 1802, and 5 November 1813), Correspondence of TwoBrothers, 59, 124.

36 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

What bothered Hallam most about the Scottish historians wastheir emphasis on "general principles" rather than on "matters offact." Millar, he complained, "displayed] a fault too commonamong the philosophers of his country, that of theorising upon animperfect induction, and very often upon a total misapprehensionof particular facts."30 In this spirit, Hallam felt called upon tocorrect the errors which William Robertson had made in hisHistory of Charles the Fifth, Hoping to draw a simple causal connectionbetween the growth of commerce and the emergence of politicalliberty, Robertson had attributed — mistakenly Hallam thought —the independence of Europe's cities to the prosperity generatedby the Crusades and to the deliberate policies of kings who wereseeking a force capable of offsetting the power of the barons.31 Nordid Hallam accord much merit to the kind of general propositionsfound in the historical sections of Adam Smith's work. In the Wealthof Nations, for example, Smith had attributed the emergence of goodgovernment and liberty to the salutary influence of the towns on thecountryside. It was the rise of commerce that broke the arbitrarypower of the great barons by encouraging them to spend theirwealth on luxuries rather than on maintaining military establish-ments. Hallam, however, approached the issue from an entirelydifferent direction. Whereas Smith's argument was economicand universal, specifying neither time nor place, Hallam's wasinstitutional and rooted in the uniqueness of England's past. ForHallam, it was the peculiarities of English feudalism, which lackedthe military character of its continental counterpart, the develop-ment of the common law, the "civil equality of all freemen belowthe rank of peerage," and the "subjection of peers themselves to theimpartial arm of justice" that accounted for the growth of politicalliberty in England.32

In an earlier context Burke had warned against using abstractreasoning in making political judgments. He had reprimandedEnglish supporters of the French Revolution for evaluating itsaccomplishments abstractly and for ignoring those "circumstances"that "render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious

30 Hallam to Lord Webb Seymour (27 May 1802), ibid., 59. Hallam, Middle Ages, 1: vii.31 Compare Hallam, Middle Ages, 1: 148-150, with William Robertson, The History of the Reign

of the Emperor Charles the Fifth (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1884), 1: 32-34, 36-38.32 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. Andrew Skinner (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,

1980), 508, 512-514. Hallam, Middle Ages, 2: 52-56, 3: 172-177.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 37

to mankind." For Burke institutions could be judged correctly onlywhen seen in their particular settings, and political change wouldbe welcome only if it respected those arrangements which had beenestablished by tradition and were known to work. It was theirdisregard for historical circumstances that had enabled the revol-utionaries in France to discount past practices and impose theirtruly radical alternatives.33 Hallam recognized the same tendencytoward abstraction in the writings of the Scottish historians, andin his own works paid particular attention to "circumstances."Hallam certainly would not embrace all of Burke's judgments -indeed, his interpretation of the Glorious Revolution differedconsiderably from Burke's - but adopting a Burkean empiricism, heendorsed a Burkean belief in tradition and distrust of unnecessaryinnovation.

in

In his Constitutional History, written between 1818 and 1827, Hallamturned to England's Tudor and Stuart past. The years that he spentwriting his History saw an intensification of the movement forconstitutional change that gave an added urgency to his work. Theeconomic distress afflicting the country after 1818, the publicreaction to the Peterloo Massacre, and the Queen Caroline affairaroused popular reformers and prompted more Whigs than everbefore to opt for some degree of Parliamentary reform. In 1819,1821, 1822 and 1823, Lord John Russell brought the issue before theCommons. In Ireland, the founding of the Catholic Associationorganized popular Catholicism, raised the specter of insurrection,and made Catholic emancipation the most urgent political problemafter 1825.34 As the reform movement focused increasingly onconstitutional change, the Stuart past gained in relevance since thearistocratic and Anglican exclusiveness which reformers foundobjectionable in the constitution had in large part emerged out ofthe crises of the seventeenth century. The repeal of the Test andCorporation Acts in 1828 and Catholic emancipation in 1829 would

33 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Conor Cruise O'Brien(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981), 90-91, 106, 117-125, 152-153.

34 Austin Mitchell, "The Whigs and Parliamentary Reform before 1830," Historical Studies,Australia and New Zealand, 12 (1965): 22-42. G. I. T. Machin, The Catholic Question in EnglishPolitics, 1820 to 1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964).

38 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

remove disabilities that owed their existence to the sectariancontroversies of the seventeenth century, and the Reform Act of1832 would alter a system of representation that had remainedlargely undisturbed since the 1670s. Interpretations of the Stuartpast, of which Hallam's was one of the most important, wouldfigure in the political rhetoric of the period as polemicists debatedthe historical assumptions on which the constitution had stood formore than a century and a half.

When Burke, in his Reflections, discredited reformers andDissenters by associating them with both the French revolution-aries and the Puritan radicals who had overthrown the monarchy ofCharles I, he set the tone for much of the Tory rhetoric in thedecades to come. What alarmed Burke most about Richard Price'ssermon commending the French Revolution was that he heardwithin it the voice of seventeenth-century Puritanism. BehindPrice's claim that England had established the right in 1688 tochoose its own governors Burke found the same principle at workthat had once led the nation to execute its king.35 Robert Southey'sessays defending the Anglican constitution kept this rhetoric alivethroughout the early nineteenth century.36 Writing on the eve ofthe Reform Act, the Tory polemicist John Wilson Croker alluded tothe misfortunes of the Civil War in order to alert the nation to thedangers at hand. The desire for constitutional change, he warned,was "as old as the Great Rebellion." The reformers of the 1830swere nothing less than the direct descendants of the revolutionariesof the Long Parliament. They were "the ultra-whigs, the dissenters,the republicans, and all that party which derives its origins from thereign of Charles I, and which, on every occasion that has sincesuccessively offered, has shown itself hostile to the monarchical andecclesiastical parts of the constitution." Were they to triumphagain, Croker predicted, England should expect the worst: "theynever will be satisfied with any thing short of expelling once more thebishops, the lords, and the monarch."37 Behind all this rhetoric lay

35 B u r k e , Reflections, 94 -100 , 157-159.36 [Robert Southey], "History of Dissenters," Quarterly Review, 10 (October, 1813): 90-139,

"Life of Cromwell," Quarterly Review, 25 (July, 1821): 279—347, "Hallam's ConstitutionalHistory of England" Quarterly Review•, 37 (January, 1828): 194 -260 , "Lord N u g e n t ' s MemorialsqfHampden," Quarterly Review, 47 (July, 1832): 457-519 .

37 [John Wilson Croker], "Friendly Advice to the Lords," Quarterly Review, 45 (July, 1831):512, and "State of Government," Quarterly Review, 46 (November, 1831): 303. For a moreextended discussion of the parallel between the 1640s and 1830s, see [John Wilson

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 39

Hume's celebrated defense of the Stuarts, which Francis Jeffreyconsidered the "great support of. . . sincere Tory opinions."38

Radicals, on the other hand, drew sustenance from England'sseventeenth-century republican tradition. Catharine Macaulay,answering Hume, had published between 1763 and 1781 & History ofEngland that praised the Parliamentary opposition to Charles I andadmired the Commonwealth established after his execution.39

William Godwin extended this tradition into the 1820s with hisHistory of the Commonwealth, which is instructive for its coupling ofrepublicanism and Dissent. Godwin, raised as an Independent andeducated in the Dissenting academies, remained within thetradition of rational Dissent long after he had abandoned hisChristian belief. The purpose of his history was to rehabilitateEngland's republican and Dissenting traditions by writing anaccount of the Commonwealth that would judge the periodfairly. For Godwin, republicanism was the political expression ofseventeenth-century Independency, and by showing what wasconstructive in one tradition he demonstrated what was praise-worthy in the other. These divided loyalties help to explain theambivalence that characterized his appraisal of Cromwell. As arepublican, he could not accept the fact that Cromwell's ambitionhad put an end to the Commonwealth and destroyed the benefitsthat republican government might have conferred on England. Butas a Dissenter, he was drawn to Cromwell as the greatest historicalfigure whom the Dissenters ever produced. Where establishmentpolemicists such as Burke or Croker had denied Dissent aconstructive role in the nation's past, Godwin demonstrated thelegitimacy of the Dissenting tradition by showing what wasadmirable in the aspirations not only of the Commonwealthmen,but of Cromwell as well.40

Croker and John Gibson Lockhart], "The Revolutions of 1640 and 1830," Quarterly Review,47 (March, 1832): 269—300.

38 [Francis Jeffrey], "Brodie's Constitutional History: Corrections of Mr. Hume," EdinburghReview, 40 (March, 1824): 99—100.

39 C a t h a r i n e M a c a u l a y , The History of England, from the Accession of James I to the Elevation of theHouse of Hanover, third edition (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1769). For the survivalof the republican tradition across the eighteenth century, see Caroline Robbins, TheEighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstanceof English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II to the War with the Thirteen Colonies(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959).

40 W i l l i a m G o d w i n , History of the Commonwealth of England, from Its Commencement, to theRestoration of Charles the Second (London: Henry Colburn, 1824-1828).

4O The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Hallam's Constitutional History can be read as a contribution tothis debate over the Stuart past. As in his earlier work, the doctrineof the balanced constitution provided the organizing principle. Themixed constitution that had emerged from the Middle Ages, heargued, was imperfect and rarely achieved equilibrium during thesixteenth or seventeenth centuries. It was a "monarchy greatlylimited by law, but retaining much power that was ill calculated topromote the public good, and swerving continually into an irregularcourse, which there was no restraint adequate to correct."41 In hisConstitutional History, Hallam examined the agonizing strugglebetween king and Parliament out of which grew the mechanismsand habits necessary to bring the actual practice of governmentinto conformity with the law.

In his consideration of this struggle, Hallam was the partisan ofneither the Stuarts nor the extreme Parliamentarians, but under-stood that each party had at one time or another overstepped itslegal bounds and disrupted the constitution's balance. Under theTudors and early Stuarts the monarchy was the primary offender.Charles carried the arbitrary practices of Elizabeth to such lengthsthat only the vigorous resistance of Parliament saved the consti-tution from ruin. The Long Parliament briefly returned theconstitution to equilibrium by limiting the power of the crown, butthen destroyed what it had achieved as it encroached on the king'slegitimate authority, led the nation into civil war, overthrew theconstitution, and created a republic. After the Restoration hadreestablished a government of king, Lords and Commons, the laterStuarts threatened to subvert the constitution once again in theirattempt to render their authority absolute. The Glorious Revol-ution, in a sense the culmination of Hallam's History, finally put anend to this chronic instability. By setting the king beneath the lawand making him responsible to Parliament, the Revolution success-fully combined "hereditary monarchy" with "security of freedom"in such a way that "neither the ambition of kings shall underminethe people's rights, nor the jealousy of the people overturn thethrone."42 A constitutional arrangement guaranteeing the equalparticipation of both monarch and Parliament had finally beenachieved.

The beauty of Hallam's approach to England's constitutional

41 Hal lam, Constitutional History, i: 282. 42 Ibid., 3: 94—95.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 41development was that it enabled him to challenge the interpret-ations of the Stuart past made popular by Hume on the one hand,and by radicals such as Catharine Macaulay or Godwin on theother. Like most Whigs, Hallam read Hume as a Tory apologist forthe royal prerogative who had defended the unconstitutionalconduct of James I and Charles I on the pretext that they weremerely continuing the practices of government which theirpredecessors had established. Henry VIII and Elizabeth had ruledas absolute monarchs and the fact that their Parliaments willinglysupported them proved to Hume that absolutism was the acceptedform of government in the sixteenth century. If there was aconstitution in existence when James I came to the throne, thenfor Hume it was the absolutism of Elizabeth. According to thisinterpretation, the early Stuarts were defending past practice andthe Parliamentarians, contrary to the orthodox Whig view, were theinnovators attempting to subvert what was already established.

In his Constitutional History and Middle Ages, Hallam took Hume totask. The point of these books was to show that a mixed constitutionhad developed in the course of the Middle Ages which the Tudorsand early Stuarts had frequently and willfully transgressed. WhereHume, in his approach to the Middle Ages, described the actualconduct of the Plantagenets, noting how often they violated the lawand concluding that England's medieval kings were absolute inpractice, if not in name, Hallam pointed to the steady growth ofthe laws protecting the subject and limiting the king's authority.Although Hallam agreed with Hume that medieval society lackedthe means to enforce all its laws, he nevertheless spoke of the "real,though imperfect, liberty" of his ancestors.43 England's laws werepresent in the statute books, the legal boundaries to the royalauthority established during the Middle Ages were thus real, andHume was wrong to imply that they were not. Nor did Hallamaccede to Hume's claim that absolutism was generally acceptedduring the seventeenth century. He agreed with Hume thatElizabeth was a powerful and often arbitrary monarch. But heemphasized that she frequently overstepped the constitution andhe rejected outright Hume's claim that the nation had willinglysubmitted to her. Elizabeth's Parliaments defended their rightto participate equally in the governing of the nation and they

43 Hallam, Middle Ages, 2: 170-172.

42 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

resisted her "high assumptions of prerogative." The ElizabethanParliament, Hallam concluded, was not "so servile and submissivean assembly" as Hume had made it out to be, and the Tudormonarchy, like the Plantagenet, was "greatly limited by law" inprinciple, if not always in practice.44 James and Charles may havecontinued to govern in the spirit of Elizabeth, but in so doing theyviolated the constitution and met with a justified resistance fromParliament.

Hallam's History also offered an alternative to those interpret-ations of the Stuart past that praised indiscriminately the actions ofParliament. Hallam was no democrat and frowned upon the repub-lican ideal of government by Parliament alone. Popular assemblies,he once warned, "when inflamed by passion," were likely to ignorejustice and moderation.45 As an illustration of this observation hepointed to the Long Parliament which at first "effected more for[England's] liberties, than any that had gone before," but then"ended by subverting the constitution it had strengthened, and bysinking . . . beneath a usurper it had blindly elevated to power."Hallam initially praised the Long Parliament for placing much-needed restraints on the power of the crown. The Triennial Act, thecondemnation of ship-money and the abolition of the courts of StarChamber and High Commission were laudable measures in whichhe could find nothing at all innovative. They were the last in a seriesof confirmations of the rights and liberties of Englishmen thatstretched from Magna Carta through the Petition of Right.46 ButHallam's praise for the Long Parliament ended here. The assemblysoon succumbed to passion, encroached on the king's lawfulauthority until civil war became unavoidable, and violated theconstitution, the privileges of the Lords and the rights ofthe people. "These great abuses of power," Hallam reflected," . . . would make a sober man hesitate to support them in a civilwar, wherein their success must not only consummate the destruc-tion of the crown, the church, and the peerage, but expose all whohad dissented from their proceedings, as it ultimately happened, toan oppression less severe perhaps, but far more sweeping, than thatwhich had rendered the star-chamber odious." By 1642, on the eveof the Civil War, Hallam considered Charles more likely to preserve

44 Hallam, Constitutional History, i: 230, 248, 263, 266-267, 281-282.45 Ibid., 1: 355. 46 Ibid., 2: 96-104.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 43

the constitution than the Parliamentarians: "Law, justice, moder-ation, once ranged against him, had gone over to his banner."47

Critical, then, of both the Stuarts and the Commonwealthmen,Hallam's History championed the Whiggism that triumphed withthe Glorious Revolution. There was for Hallam a crucial distinctionbetween the revolutions of 1648 and 1688: whereas he condemnedthe regicides for destroying England's mixed constitution byabolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords, he praised thestatesmen of 1688 because they successfully met the challengeposed by James II and in doing so not only preserved, but alsostrengthened that mixed constitution. By altering the successionand establishing that the power of the crown derived from Parlia-ment, the Whigs at the Revolution discredited those doctrines ofindefeasible right and passive obedience that had exerted such apernicious influence in the past.48 As they emerged from theConstitutional History, the Whigs appeared as responsible statesmen,neither republicans nor upholders of absolute monarchy, who stoodfor liberty under law and within the confines of England's mixedconstitution. Hallam provided them with a long and honorablepedigree which had the effect of legitimating them in the presentby rooting them in the past. Their principles had prevailed not onlyat the Glorious Revolution, but during the opening moments of theLong Parliament as well.

For Hallam, the trademark of the Whigs was their tendency tofavor moderate reform. The Tories, he explained, considered theconstitution an "ultimate point" from which they would neverdeviate, while the Whigs "deemed all forms of governmentsubordinate to the public good, and therefore liable to change,when they should cease to promote that object." But there werelimits to acceptable change, for the Whigs rejected "all unnecessaryinnovation." They welcomed liberty of the press and freedom ofinquiry. Advocates of toleration, they supported the Dissenters andabhorred the "haughty language of the Church."49 Here was theWhiggism that Hallam celebrated in his Constitutional History. Itinformed as well his own approach to the political problemsconfronting England in the early nineteenth century.

Between 1808 and 1827,tne years when Hallam was occupied withhis two works of history, there were few problems more pressing

47 Ibid., 2: 104, 137-149. 48 Ibid., 3: 93-103. 49 Ibid., 3: 194-196.

44 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

than relations between Church and state, especially as thedemands of the Roman Catholics and Protestant Nonconformistsgrew stronger and the role of the Anglican Establishment came intoquestion. In general, the Whigs were the friends of both Catholicsand Dissenters. Arguing that religion was an inadequate reason forexcluding a sizable portion of the community from the politicalprocess, they made Catholic emancipation and repeal of the Testand Corporation Acts standard policies. But their advocacy ofreligious freedom rarely amounted to an outright rejection of theEstablished Church. Like most of their contemporaries, the Whigsbelieved that religion was vital to a moral society and that it wasthe state's responsibility to promote it. A national church, theyreasoned, broad enough to meet the spiritual needs of the majority,would best achieve this aim. Not surprisingly, the Whigs oftencriticized those High and Low Churchmen who would narrow thedoctrines of the Anglican Church and exclude many Protestantswho might otherwise have been members.50

On matters of religious policy, Hallam took the Whig position.He believed strongly in freedom of inquiry and disliked all formsof ecclesiastical tyranny. One of his earliest publications was astrident defense of John Leslie, professor of mathematics at theUniversity of Edinburgh, whose appointment to the position hadbeen challenged, unsuccessfully as it turned out, by the Edinburghclergy on the grounds that he held atheistical beliefs. Demon-strating how the churchmen had misconstrued Leslie's opinionsand accused him unjustly, Hallam not only protested an instance ofclerical persecution, but emphasized the necessity of freeingphilosophical speculation from clerical domination.51

Hallam was also a firm advocate of Catholic emancipation, andin an early article for the Edinburgh Review he made his views clear:the penal laws were unjust, served no useful function and ought tobe repealed. Recognizing that Catholic emancipation was mostly anIrish problem, he turned to the history of England's dominion inIreland to explain why the laws were originally framed and why they

50 G. F. A. Best, "The Whigs and the Church Establishment in the Age of Grey andHolland," History, 45 (i960): 103-118.

51 [Henry Hallam], "A Statement of Facts Relative to the Election of a MathematicalProfessor of the University of Edinburgh," Critical Review, 5, third series (July, 1805):242-252. For the authorship of this article, see Francis Horner to Hallam (2 August 1805)and Hallam to Horner (9 August 1805), Memoirs of Francis Horner, 1: 302-305.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 45were no longer necessary. The English supremacy, he pointed out,was an "unjust usurpation," the most severe consequence of whichwas the arbitrary imposition of the Reformation on an unwillingnation. For Hallam, as for many Whigs, the sole justification of theEstablished Church rested on the condition that it representedthe religious beliefs of the majority, and on this ground the IrishChurch stood condemned. Ireland had never been a Protestantcountry and would probably never become one. The Anglicanreligion, in Hallam's opinion, was an "anomalous system," suitableonly to England, which had never prospered anywhere else: not inScotland, America, or Ireland. In so far as the penal laws weredesigned to create Protestant converts, they had failed and wouldcontinue to do so. Nor could Hallam find reason to fear Catholicparticipation in the politics of his own country. As long as Englanditself remained Protestant, a Catholic majority in Parliament wouldbe impossible, and even were Catholics to dominate the court, asthey had in the reign of James II, they could do little harm sincethe constitution following the Revolution of 1688 was protectedby annual sessions of Parliament, the Mutiny Act and "popularsentiment and long habits of freedom."52

In his Constitutional History, Hallam continued to ponder thequestion of Church and state, noting in his preface that much ofthe book was taken up with religious matters precisely because theywere "most important in their application to modern times."53 Inthis work of history, then, he presented his most mature thoughtsconcerning the policies which governments ought to pursue towardthose who dissent from the established religion. His genuineaversion to ecclesiastical tyranny was evident throughout. Hedeplored the Elizabethan persecution of the Catholics, the Laudianattack on the Puritans and the exclusion of the Dissenters afterthe Restoration. Such policies were not only unjust, they wereinexpedient. Religious intolerance, he reflected, no matter howviolent or extreme, would never change a person's beliefs. At best itwould make him a hypocrite, outwardly conforming to the estab-lished practices while inwardly remaining true to his faith. At worstit would turn him against the state which had set out to oppress

52 [Henry Hallam], "Sir J. Throckmorton on the Catholic Question," Edinburgh Review, 8(July, 1806): 313-314, 315-316, 3i9732°-

53 H a l l a m , Constitutional History, 1: vii .

46 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

him. "It is my thorough conviction," Hallam wrote, "that thepersecution . . . carried on against the English catholics, however itmight serve to delude the government by producing an apparentconformity, could not but excite a spirit of disloyalty in manyadherents of that faith." If religious oppression led naturally torebellion, then only toleration would guarantee subjects loyal to thecrown. "If a fair and legal toleration," he reflected, " . . . had beenconceded in the first part of Elizabeth's reign, she would havespared herself those perpetual terrors of rebellion which occupiedall her later years."54

Hallam used England's seventeenth-century past not only toargue for toleration, but to urge as well the subordination of theChurch to the state. He believed in the rule of law and for thisreason objected to the intrusion of religion into politics. His studyof England's history amply illustrated that whenever religiousparties were allowed to predominate, fanaticism triumphed overlegal government. In particular, his History demonstrated that whenreligious motives were permitted to influence the judicial process,respect for the law was sacrificed while persecution and intoleranceprevailed. To ensure the rule of law, then, Hallam recommendedthe subordination of the Church to the state, for only the secularmagistrate was sufficiently free from religious zeal. This Erastianideal he found best realized in the Anglican arrangement of his ownday, where "every sentence of the spiritual judge [was] liable to bereversed by a civil tribunal."55 In contrast to High Churchmen andDissenters, Hallam advocated an Anglicanism which was compre-hensive, tolerant, and law-abiding. This was a moderate position,agreeable to the Whigs, and to justify his claim that it was thelegitimate voice of the Established Church, Hallam stressed itshonorable heritage. He singled out the work of Hooker, whoseEcclesiastical Polity justified a broad church by teaching thatwithin Christianity ritual observances and forms of ecclesiasticalgovernment were variable, and he laid a similar emphasis onChillingworth, the English founder of the "latitudinarian school oftheology." Despite what the Dissenters might argue, Hallampointed out, Cromwell and the Independents never practiced thetoleration they preached; it was in fact the "Anglican writers,

54 Ibid., 1: 130, 172. 55 Ibid, 2: 194, n. 3.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 47the school of Chillingworth, Hales, Taylor, Locke, and Hoadley,that rendered [toleration] victorious."56

In addition to Catholic emancipation, the Whigs' other consti-tutional cause during the 1820s was Parliamentary reform and onthis issue Hallam was at odds with the more progressive membersof his party. He was not opposed in principle to changes in theelectoral system. When in 1828 the Whigs brought in a bill totransfer two representatives from Penryn to Manchester, Hallamdeclared that he was "delighted" with the measure.57 But thecomprehensive Reform Bill introduced by Russell in March, 1831,Hallam found unacceptable.58 The most explicit explanation of whyhe viewed the bill with disfavor appears in the memoirs of the Duede Broglie. An Anglophile and a friend of many prominent Whigs,Broglie recorded in his Personal Recollections a conversation betweenHallam and Lord Lansdowne concerning the shortcomings ofRussell's proposal. What struck Hallam most about the bill was itsextent. To a historian who saw England's political development asa Burkean exchange between past and present, Russell's proposalseemed to disregard precedent, vested rights, and the "wisdom ofour ancestors." A plan as innovative as this, he feared, would set inmotion a sequence of reforms which would culminate in universalsuffrage and the abolition of both the monarchy and the House ofLords. Hallam further observed that the king had already lost mostof his real influence, possessing now only a "moral authority,"and that the Lords were in a similar state of decline. The powerof government thus rested almost entirely with the House ofCommons and if the Reform Bill were to pass, then the "middleclasses" would come to dominate not only the Commons, but thegovernment as a whole. Ideally, Hallam argued, the "three powers"of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy ought to balance oneanother in Parliament. The English constitution owed its stabilityin the past to this balance and a properly framed reform bill shouldaim to strengthen, not destroy it. The Due de Broglie recorded thisconversation more than thirty years after the event, and heacknowledged that across the interval some ideas of his own may

56 Ib id . , 1: 216-219, 2: 77-79, 197.57 Hallam to John Whishaw (28 April 1828), The "Pope" of Holland House, 321.58 Hallam to Lord John Russell, draft letter (20 July 1831); Hallam papers, Christ Church,

Oxford, 7: 7-8. Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, ed. Lord John Russell(London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1853-1856), 6: 221.

48 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

have colored his account.59 Be that as it may, a reading of theConstitutional History reveals that Hallam did reason in muchthe manner Broglie described.

The final section of Hallam's i/utery, which described the growthof the constitution through the reign of George II, ended on a noteof uncertainty. His account of the seventeenth century had shownclearly that constitutional balance was at best a precariouscondition, and when he went on to survey the developments of theeighteenth century, he discovered powerful forces, both politicaland economic, which threatened to undermine the balanceachieved in 1688. Owing to the economic prosperity which Englandexperienced during the eighteenth century, the "democraticalinfluence" in Parliament, the "commercial and industriousclasses," had increased, and although the House of Commons wasstill primarily aristocratic throughout the reign of George II, thistrend had continued into the nineteenth century.60 For Hallam,however, the strength of the Commons lay to a great extent in itsaristocratic makeup. The Commons, he wrote, should not "followwith the precision of a weather-glass the unstable prejudices of themultitude." Its function was to steer "a firm course in domestic andexternal affairs, with a circumspectness and providence for thefuture, which no wholly democratical government has ever yetdisplayed." Only a "middle position between an oligarchical senateand a popular assembly" would guarantee the Commons its"dignity and usefulness."61 Although Hallam never commented onthose constitutional developments which occurred after the deathof George II, the inference seems certain that he consideredthe influx of this "democratical" element into Parliament anunwelcome event, and reasoning such as this may account for hisopposition to the Reform Act of 1832: an extensive widening of thefranchise would only add to the decline of aristocratic influence inthe House of Commons.

IV

Although a work of considerable scholarship, Hallam's Consti-tutional History was also engaged literature, addressing the political

59 Recollections of the Due de Broglie, 2: 515-523.60 H a l l a m , Constitutional History•, 3: 2 8 9 - 2 9 1 . 61 Ib id . , 3: 230.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 49controversies of the 1820s. It was at once a forceful statement ofFoxite principles, emphasizing that the purpose of government wasto promote the public good, insisting on the rule of law, anddisplaying a fundamental loyalty to the English constitution inChurch and state. Hallam expressed these views in a history thatwas neither Tory nor republican. He rejected the interpretation ofHume, which saw validity in the absolutism of the early Stuarts, andof the republicans, which set out to vindicate the radicalism of theCommonwealth. Challenging Hume's attempt to use an allegedElizabethan absolutism in order to defend the policies of James Iand Charles I, Hallam made clear his opposition to an unrestrainedexecutive and his healthy respect for the rights and liberties ofEnglishmen. Criticizing the Long Parliament for its excesses, hefurther demonstrated his aversion to republican schemes ofgovernment and to those popular radicals who continued to drawsustenance from the "good old cause." Applied to contemporaryissues, Hallam's Whiggism cautioned moderation. In matters ofreligion, he urged a latitudinarian Anglicanism, subordinate to thelaw and the civil authorities, and displaying toleration toward thoseProtestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics who still found itimpossible to worship within the Established Church. But heopposed extensive measures of Parliamentary reform, fearingthat a widening of the franchise and an alteration in the represen-tation such as the Whigs would carry in 1832 might disturbconstitutional equipoise by diluting the aristocratic composition ofthe Commons.

Coming at a time when progressives, responding to popularpressure, were encouraging the Whigs to embrace Parliamentaryreform, Hallam's histories provided a set of principles thatconservatives in the party would have found attractive since theirreassertion of a Foxite constitutionalism, their Burkean tradition-alism, and their belief in aristocratic government establishedcomfortable limits to constitutional change. No wonder, then, thatthe young Viscount Milton, having decided that only Parliamentaryreform would restore social harmony and rebuild the people'sconfidence in aristocratic leadership, deemed Hallam's interpret-ation of the Civil War too favourable to the royalist cause.62 Forthose Whigs frustrated with Hallam's conservatism, there were

62 Wasson, "The Great Whigs," 442.

50 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

other interpretations of the English past available. Lord JohnRussell had used his Life of William Lord Russell and Essay on EnglishGovernment to direct the Whigs away from their customary preoccu-pation with the crown and toward an endorsement of popularissues.63 In 1825 Macaulay published his celebrated essay on Milton,and three years later he was asked to review Hallam's ConstitutionalHistory for the Edinburgh. The differences between Hallam's andMacaulay's approaches to the past reflect clearly the division in theparty between those anxious about the future, and those eager forreform.

Macaulay agreed for the most part with Hallam's interpretationof the Reformation and, like Hallam, used arguments drawn fromEngland's Tudor and Stuart past to encourage Catholic emanci-pation and relief for Dissenters.64 But despite this large area ofagreement, the two parted company over Parliamentary reform.Macaulay, growing impatient with Hallam's conservatism, closedhis review by arguing vigorously in support of reform. The period ofEnglish history beginning with the Tudors and ending with thereign of George II was a distinct epoch in the nation's pastdominated by the contest between king and Parliament. By themid-eighteenth century, Macaulay pointed out, Parliament hadsecured its rights and privileges, the modern constitution had beenestablished, and the conflict between parties had temporarilyabated. But this political stability was deceptive, for a new contestwas emerging between the unenfranchised nation and the rulingoligarchy: "The conflict which commenced in the middle of theeighteenth century," he observed, and "which still remainsundecided . . . , is between a large portion of the People on the oneside, and the Crown and the Parliament united on the other."65

Given the development of English industry and commerce, giventhe rise of a politically responsible middle class and an increasinglydiscontented working class, some degree of Parliamentary reformwas rapidly becoming necessary. England's governing elite in the1820s thus faced a situation analogous to that which had confrontedJames I: either it could follow in the path of the Stuarts, oppose

63 B r e n t , Liberal Anglican Politics, 4 0 - 6 4 .64 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Hallam's Constitutional History" Edinburgh Review > 48

(September, 1828): 100-112.65 Ibid., 162-165.

Hallam and nineteenth-century Whiggism 51

constitutional change and plunge the nation into civil war; or itcould learn from the events of the seventeenth century, reformitself peacefully and avoid revolution by bringing the middle classinto the political community. "We know of no great revolution,"Macaulay reflected, "which might not have been prevented bycompromise early and graciously made."66

Much of Hallam's hesitation over Parliamentary reform wasbased on an analogy between the 1640s and his own age: theParliamentarians in the Civil War had invalidated their cause bydestroying the balance of the constitution and the nineteenth-century advocates of Parliamentary reform, he feared, werethreatening to do the same. As part of his own polemic, then,Macaulay threw his support behind the opponents of the Stuarts,vindicating the Long Parliament and insisting that the Civil Warhad been, in fact, necessary and justifiable. To substantiate hisclaim, he used an argument concerning the growth of standingarmies that was found in the work of John Millar and that echoedthose eighteenth-century opposition writers who had stressed thedangers that armies posed to free republics. In his ConstitutionalHistory, Hallam had argued that the leaders of the Commons over-stepped their legal bounds and upset constitutional balance whenin 1642 they attempted to deprive the king of his right to summonthe militia.67 In his response to Hallam, Macaulay used an entirelydifferent line of reasoning to exonerate the Parliament and defendits decision to control the army. Most of the states of Europe, hepointed out, had enjoyed free constitutions so long as they weredefended by militias drawn from the people. But with the rise ofprofessional armies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,the monarchs of the continent acquired the means to subvert theliberties of their subjects and render their authority absolute.England, however, had avoided this unfortunate developmentbecause, as an island, it had no need for a standing army until thereign of Charles I, when the rebellions in Scotland and Ireland hadmade one necessary. Only then did a professional military threatenthe nation's free constitution. Seen within this context, the strugglebetween the king and Parliament was over control of the army. ForMacaulay as for Millar, England remained free at a time when

66 Ibid., 168—169. 67 Hal lam, Constitutional History, 2: 127-136.

52 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

the other states of Europe were becoming absolute monarchiesprecisely because it refused to give up its army to Charles.68

In accepting the Civil War as necessary for the defense offreedom, Macaulay was drawing near to the radical traditionof Catharine Macaulay and William Godwin that Hallam hadexplicitly rejected. Where Macaulay was comfortable embracingthose reforms which would bring the middle class prominently intothe political community and wrote history that spoke to theideological needs of the Victorians, Hallam's preoccupation withthe constitution seemed to owe more to the late eighteenth century.The doctrine of the balanced constitution, so central to hisinterpretation, was already obsolete by the time he was writing, andthe Constitutional History was the last major study of the seventeenthcentury to use it as an explanatory device. As works of erudition,Hallam's histories would survive well into the nineteenth century,until they were surpassed by the scholarship of the great Victorians- Stubbs and Freeman on the Middle Ages, Froude and Creightonon the Reformation, Macaulay and Gardiner on the Stuarts. As anexpression of ideology, they were eclipsed by the Reform Act of1832, which changed irrevocably the constitution that Hallam hadhoped to preserve.

68 Macaulay, "Hallam's Constitutional History " 124-133. See also John Millar, Historical Viewof the English Government, 3: 113-125. For a discussion of the Scottish influences onMacaulay's thinking, see J. W. burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the EnglishPast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 41-48, and John Clive, Macaulay:The Shaping of the Historian (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 77, 105, 107, 124. For thestanding army controversy in its Scottish context, see John Robertson, The ScottishEnlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1985).

CHAPTER 2

Thomas Babington Macaulay andVictorian religious controversy

Macaulay's immensely popular History of England has receivedgreater critical notice than perhaps any other book of its kindwritten during the Victorian period. And yet, despite all thisattention, few commentators have appreciated the extent to whichthese five volumes, published between 1848 and 1861, can be read asa liberal response to the religious disputes that dominated Englishpolitics from the passing of the Reform Act in 1832 to the furor over"Papal aggression" in the early 1850s.1 Macaulay himself certainly

1 References to religious matters are so pervasive in Macaulay's History that it is surprisingscholars have made so little of them. But such is the case. Macaulay's two most recentbiographers, Owen Dudley Edwards, Macaulay (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), andJohn Clive, Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), payscant attention to the sectarian dimension of early Victorian politics and consequently donot relate Macaulay's work to it. Clive also ends his biography with Macaulay's returnfrom India in 1838 and does not deal at all with the issues behind the writing of theHistory.]SLUG Millgate, Macaulay (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), is concernedprimarily with questions of literary technique. Even her chapter on Macaulay's treatmentof the Irish question does not place his position on Ireland and Catholicism in the largercontext of his overall approach to sectarian politics. Other recent studies which aremainly interested in Macaulay's general contribution to English literary culture,Rosemary Jann, The Art and Science of Victorian History (Columbus: Ohio State UniversityPress, 1985), 66-104 and A. Dwight Culler, The Victorian Mirror of History (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1985), 20-38, are all but silent on the topic of religion. J. W. Burrow, ALiberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1981), n-93, n°tes early on that the conflict between Church and Dissent made theStuart past especially relevant to the Victorians, but then chooses to pursue other themesin his discussion of Macaulay. Joseph Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), is one scholar who does deal withMacaulay's position on religious controversy, but his approach is considerably differentfrom, though not necessarily incompatible with, mine. Hamburger argues that Macaulaysaw politics as the art of "trimming" between the extremes of "revolution" and"repression." Religion, Hamburger goes on, provided Macaulay with one model forcomprehending political extremism, with Puritanism, for example, becoming analogousto radicalism. But, as I will argue, Macaulay also understood politics in terms of a conflictbetween Anglicanism, Dissent and Catholicism, which was just as important for theVictorians as their fear of revolution. The great Victorian essayists - Stephen, Morley,

53

54 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

knew that his book would be read in this way. On the publication ofhis first two volumes in 1848 he noted in his journal: "I expect . . .furious abuse both from the ultra Evangelicals and from theTractarians, nor shall I be sorry to be so abused." Several dayslater he remarked: "It is odd that I have not yet seen a single line -encomiastic or vituperative - on the religious disquisitions whichfill so many pages of the book, and which, I should have thought,must have excited the indignation of all sects, Papists, Churchmen,Puritans, and Quakers. But this I suppose is still to come."2

Macaulay's History did eventually arouse considerable controversy,and much as he anticipated it was not over his interpretation ofthe Revolution's secular achievement. To interpret the eventsof 1688 and 1689 as a defensive and prescriptive revolution whichfinally put an end to the conflict between crown and Parliamentwithout altering the fundamental laws of the kingdom was almostcommonplace by the mid-nineteenth century and could be foundin the works of Henry Hallam and Sir James Mackintosh.Reading Macaulay's History in 1848, the year of continental revol-utions, Tories as well as Whigs would have found reassuring hisconviction that England had avoided an uprising in 1848 preciselybecause it had experienced a "preserving revolution" in 1688.3It was not his comments on the constitution so much as those"religious disquisitions" that would prove controversial in theend.

Histories of the Stuart past generated so much discord during thenineteenth century in part because the Victorians saw a parallelbetween the religious controversies of the seventeenth century andthe sectarian strife of their own age. Few problems troubledVictorian politics as persistently as religious dissent. The repeal ofthe Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and Catholic emancipationin 1829 maY have dispelled the myth that Britain could remainreligiously uniform, but they left many subsidiary issues

Gladstone and others - gave us an incomplete image of Macaulay which all of the worksmentioned above have helped to revise. Now that historians have started to recapture thereligious context of Victorian politics it is time to place Macaulay within it.

2 Macaulay, Journal (7 and 12 December [1848]). I would like to thank Dr. Robert Robsonfor making his typescript of Macaulay's journal available to scholars. Both journal andtypescript are in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

3 The Works of Lord Macaulay, Albany edition (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1898), 3:281-284, 288.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 55

unresolved. With the rise of Protestant Dissent in England andScotland and the increasingly well-organized Catholic challengeto the Protestant Establishment in Ireland, discussions aboutLaud and the Puritans, Cromwell and Charles, James andWilliam easily became ideologically charged. Where HighAnglicans and Tractarians might seek inspiration in the church-manship of Archbishop Laud or the Nonjurors, Dissenters fromthe traditional denominations - Congregationalists, Baptists,Presbyterians - invariably traced their beginnings back toseventeenth-century Puritanism. As Dissent became more vocal inthe 1830s and 1840s, historians like the Congregationalist RobertVaughan and the Unitarian John Forster produced a body ofscholarship that emphasized the contribution which Puritanismhad made to the growth of civil and religious liberty in England.Though speaking from a position outside the mainstream ofEnglish Dissent, Thomas Carlyle presented in his powerful butidiosyncratic edition of Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches animage of Cromwell as a Christian hero, sincere in his Puritan faith,that would inspire generations of Nonconformists to increasedpolitical activity.

The admission of Dissenters and Catholics into the politicalcommunity forced the Whigs to rethink the role of the EstablishedChurch in what was now acknowledged to be a religiously pluralsociety. With the doctrine of the Anglican constitution no longerappropriate, new principles had to be found to replace those whichposited Anglican Christianity as the basis for civil government inEngland. Macaulay's essays of the 1820s and early 1830s madeimportant contributions to this debate, and his History of Englandwas a powerful expression of the religious latitudinarianismcharacteristic of mid-Victorian Whiggism. Just as the GloriousRevolution could be interpreted as having finally brought to anend the century-old conflict between king and Parliament, so theevents of 1688 and 1689 could be seen as having establishedthe principles of religious liberty that would make England atruly tolerant nation. In his History, Macaulay would celebrate anundogmatic Protestantism that he would attribute to William III,and he would provide a historical justification for admittingDissenters into the political community as full members. Hewould acknowledge that the great tragedy of the Revolution hadbeen its treatment of the Catholic population of Ireland, and by

56 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

contrasting England's mistakes in Ireland to the successfulreligious settlement in Scotland, he would indicate what stepsshould be taken to rectify the Irish situation. Finally, replying toHigh Churchmen and Tractarians, he would defend the Erastian-ism that lay at the heart of the English constitution in Church andstate.

Historians have only now come to appreciate the importance ofreligion, particularly sectarian controversy, in shaping the politicsof the 1830s and 1840s. In his study of the religious aspects of earlynineteenth-century Whiggism, Richard Brent has recently drawnattention to a strong liberal Anglican tendency that emerged in the1820s and became prominent in the Whig party after Melbourneformed his second government in 1835. Led by Russell and Althorp,these liberal Anglicans set out in the 1820s to transform the Whigsinto a popular party by endorsing those reforms advocated by themiddle classes such as widening the franchise and granting con-cessions to Catholic and Protestant Dissent. On religious matterstheir position was latitudinarian and Erastian. They supported theChurch of England, believing that it had an important role to playin the traditional areas of devotion and education, and thought thatits association with the state should remain intact. But they werealso sympathetic to Dissenters. They were willing to accommodatenon-Anglicans and remove their grievances providing it would notthreaten the well-being of the Anglican Establishment to do so.Thus they commuted the tithe in England, a reform which did notaffect the financial standing of the Church in any meaningful way,but were not prepared to abolish Church rates once the Dissentersmade the attack on Church rates the first salvo in a campaigntoward disestablishment. In the 1830s they extended the rightto grant degrees to the nondenominational London University,provided for the civil registration of births, marriages and deathsand enabled Dissenters to be married according to their ownrituals. They reduced the size of the Protestant Establishment inIreland, bringing it more closely into conformity with the numberof its communicants, and endorsed the principle that its surplusrevenue should be used for nonsectarian purposes benefiting theentire Irish nation. They embraced measures to open Oxford and

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 57

Cambridge to Nonconformists and proposals for a state-fundedsystem of nondenominational education.4

Between 1825, when he began writing for the Edinburgh Review,and 1834, when he departed for India, Macaulay shared similarconcerns with the liberal Anglicans. Though not a liberal Anglicanin a doctrinal sense, he too was interested in making the Whigs apopular party, in broadening the base of British politics, and inchallenging the Anglican exclusiveness of the constitution. Thoughhe spent considerable time cultivating social ties among the leadingFoxites and owed his seat in the Commons to Lansdowne'spatronage, his political sympathies were close to those of Russelland Althorp. When the issue of whether or not Parliament coulduse the excess revenue of the Irish Establishment for nonsectarianpurposes finally split the Whig party in 1834, allowing the liberalAnglicans to gain the ascendancy, Macaulay was prepared to throwhis support behind Russell and Althorp.5 By the end of 1833 hehad suspected that a split in the Whig party was imminent and itwas in part to avoid its unpleasant consequences that he accepteda position on the Supreme Council of India. Macaulay was afraidthat if he chose to stay in England and weather the politicalstorm, then he would have to sever the ties he had formed with theleading Foxites in order to remain consistent with his politicalprinciples, which were more liberal than theirs. As he explained tohis sister: "my political prospects are very gloomy. A schism in theministry is approaching . . . If I remain in office I shall, I fear, losemy political character. If I go out and engage in opposition I shallbreak most of the private ties which I have formed during the lastthree years. In England I see nothing before me, for some timeto come, but poverty, unpopularity, and the breaking up of oldconnections." Escape to India, he hoped, would enable him to avoidall of this: "By accepting the post which is most likely to be offeredto me, I escape for a short time from the contests of faction here.When I return I find things settled, - parties formed into newcombinations, - new questions under discussion. I shall thenbe able, without the scandal of a violent separation, and without

4 Richard Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion, and Reform 1830-1841 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1987), 8-9, 25-28, 36-40, 60-62.

5 For the controversy over Irish appropriation and the dominance of the liberal Anglicansin the Whig party after 1835, s e e ibid., 16, 65-103.

58 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

exposing myself to the charge of inconsistency, to take my ownline."6

Once in India, safely removed from English domestic politics andyet well informed as to their progress, Macaulay made clear exactlywhat his course of action would have been had he remained inEngland. He would have backed the reformers and, if necessary,would have broken his ties with the Foxites and conservative Whigs."My judgment is this," he wrote to his friend Thomas Spring Rice:"The strongest party, beyond all comparison, in the empire iswhat I call the centre gauche, the party which goes further than themajority of the present ministry, and yet stops short of the lengthsto which [the radicals] Hume and Warburton go." He associatedthe "centre gauche" with the political principles of Althorp, andadvised Spring Rice: "Stick to the Centre Gauche. Gain their confi-dence. And you may do what you please. This is the game that Iwould have tried to play, if I had remained in England."7 To proposethat Macaulay allied himself with those Whigs loyal to Althorp andRussell is not to argue for an identity of interests or principles. Aswill become clear, Macaulay, far more than the liberal Anglicans,was hoping to free liberalism from its religious preoccupations andwas able to envision a society founded on purely secular grounds. Inpractice, however, this divergence of opinions may not have been assignificant as it seems. Macaulay was always acutely aware of thelimits that circumstances placed on political activity. He knew thatEngland, Scotland and Ireland were overwhelmingly Christian, andthat in England, at least, the Established Church was popularenough for any attempt to sever its ties with the state to meetconsiderable resistance. The problem confronting Macaulay wasnot how to create a secular polity, but rather how to liberalize theChristian and Anglican polities that were already in existence.

That Macaulay should have backed Althorp, Russell and theliberal Anglicans in the 1830s is hardly surprising. Like them,he had always embraced popular causes. The list of measures he

Macaulay to Hannah Macaulay (17 August 1833), The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay,ed. Thomas Pinney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974-1981), 2: 300-301.Macaulay to Thomas Spring Rice (11 August 1834), ibid., 3: 74-75. The ministry thatMacaulay referred to was essentially Grey's original government of 1830. Though theconservative Whigs - Stanley, Richmond, Ripon and Graham - resigned from the cabinetin May, 1834, and Grey followed in July, Macaulay did not hear of this shake-up until afterhe had written to Spring Rice.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 59

endorsed while campaigning in 1832 for the representation of Leedsreads like a catalogue of progressive Whiggism. The abolition ofslavery, free trade and the revision of the Corn Laws, the secretballot and an ending of intimidation in elections, strict governmenteconomy and reduced taxes, the removal of all remaining religiousdisabilities, measures to regulate child labor, abolition of govern-ment sinecures, reform of municipal corporations, and the removalof stamps on newspapers - all of these were causes popular withthe middle-class electorate.8 His early polemical efforts in theEdinburgh Review were similarly aimed at transforming the Whigsinto a more widely based party by appealing to Dissenters,Catholics and the middle class, while at the same time absolvingthe Whigs from the charge of radicalism. He criticized the Toriesfor their Anglican and aristocratic exclusiveness, and he argued forthe repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic emancipationand Parliamentary reform. And yet Macaulay was hardly a radical.Despite the unmistakable influence of utilitarian ideas on his ownthinking, he considered the Benthamites dangerously radical.

As part of his effort to articulate a popular Whiggism, Macaulayused his early essays on the Tudor and Stuart past, written between1825 a n d 1832, to shift the focus of Whig rhetoric from the GloriousRevolution to the Civil War. The interpretation of the seventeenthcentury that emerged from these occasional writings thus departedconsiderably from the historiographical tradition represented byHallam, which generally deplored the excesses of the Civil War.In the essay on Milton, Macaulay argued vigorously that anyjustification for the deposition of James in 1688 could be used tolegitimate Parliament's decision to wage war against Charles in1642. In his review of Hallam's Constitutional History, he used adifferent argument to make a similar point. Had Parliament notseized control of the army, Macaulay asserted, then Charles wouldhave followed the example of continental rulers and used hissoldiers to render the monarchy absolute. It was the Civil War thatpreserved liberty in England, not the Glorious Revolution, andMacaulay belittled the revolutionaries of 1688 because they calledin a foreign army to do what the nation should have done by itself.

8 See the descriptions of Macaulay's election speeches in the Leeds Mercury, 16 June,8 September, i December and n December 1832. Macaulay to Joseph Lees ([2] August1832), Letters, 2: 162-167.

60 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

This shift in rhetorical emphasis was significant. The Revolutionwas essentially an aristocratic event, and Whigs had routinelyreferred to it when making the claim that the aristocracy, becauseit had wrested popular rights from the crown in 1688, was able todefend the interests of the people. The Civil War, on the otherhand, was regarded as a genuinely popular movement, and byembracing it Macaulay sanctioned the right of the people toparticipate in the political process. In his essay on Burghley,published just after the passing of the Reform Act, Macaulayvindicated popular politics when he judged the Elizabethanmonarchy a good government precisely because the threat ofrebellion ensured that the queen, who lacked a standing army,would respond to the public interest.9

Macaulay's legitimation of the Civil War brought him close tothe republican tradition of Catharine Macaulay and WilliamGodwin, whose volumes on the Commonwealth had started toappear in 1824. But Macaulay was not a radical, and like othermembers of his party he wanted to affirm the respectability of theWhigs by distancing them from both popular and Benthamiteradicalism. In his essays on Milton and Hallam, for example, hedisplayed little enthusiasm for England's republican past. Herevealed the errors committed by the Commonwealthmen, andreserved his praise for Oliver Cromwell, a figure whom radicalschastised for destroying the republic established on the king'sexecution.The ambition of Oliver [Macaulay explained] was of no vulgar kind. Henever seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerelyand manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted it, till it desertedits duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the fewmembers who remained . . . were desirous to appropriate to themselves apower which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curseof a Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence at the headof affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the country aconstitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been knownin the world. He reformed the representative system . . . He gave theParliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to it the wholelegislative authority.

9 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Milton," Edinburgh Review, 42 (August, 1825): 325-334,"Hallam's Constitutional History", Edinburgh Review, 48 (September, 1828): 124-133, 159,"Nare's Memoirs of Lord Burghley - Political and Religious Aspects of His Age," EdinburghReview, 55 (April, 1832): 280-285.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 61"He will not lose," Macaulay boasted, "by comparison withWashington."10 Whereas the Commonwealthmen were guilty ofmany excesses, Cromwell received Macaulay's approbation becausehe tried to restore a moderate, just political order. It was not therepublicans' zeal for liberty that impressed Macaulay so much asCromwell's attempt to balance freedom and order in the aftermathof the Civil War.

Macaulay's treatment of the two parties that fought the CivilWar reveals further his concern to dissociate the Whigs from therepublican tradition. Though inclined to favor the Parliamen-tarians and oppose the royalists, he was also aware that theCavaliers possessed some attractive qualities that the Puritanslacked. Macaulay certainly took the Puritans seriously - theirreligiosity was sincere and had enabled them to achieve much in thecause of liberty - and yet he was aware of their limitations: theydiscouraged literature and learning, were ostentatious and lacked"eloquence." They remained fanatics and were inclined towardintolerance.11 On the other side, Macaulay could not avoid viewing"with complacency" the "character of the honest old Cavaliers,"despite his hatred of the Stuarts. These royalists may have beenmistaken in their politics, but "they possessed, in a far greaterdegree than their adversaries, those qualities which are the graceof private life." Their virtues were "courtesy, generosity, veracity,tenderness, and respect for women. They had far more both ofprofound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their mannerswere more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastesmore elegant, and their households more cheerful."12

In his essays on Milton and Hampden, Macaulay portrayed hissubjects as great men precisely because they were neither Puritannor Cavalier, but combined what was best in both parties. Milton,like the Puritans, took up the cause of liberty. He shared theirreligiosity and enjoyed the strength which that gave them. But heavoided their excesses - their "frantic delusions, their savagemanners, their hideous jargon, their scorn of science, their aversionto pleasure" - because he tempered that religiosity with the"estimable and ornamental" qualities of the Cavaliers. Combining

10 Macaulay, "Milton," 335. For a similar eulogy of Cromwell, see "Hallam's ConstitutionalHistory^ 143-145.

11 Macaulay, "Milton," 337-341. 12 Ibid., 341-342.

62 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

the Puritans' quest for liberty with the Cavaliers' love of intellect,Milton fought for the "most valuable" of freedoms - freedom ofthought. In the model of political conduct that Macaulay wasadvocating here, the struggle for liberty was thus moderated by anaristocratic sense of decorum. "Though [Milton's] opinions weredemocratic, his tastes and his associations were such as harmonizebest with monarchy and aristocracy."13

Macaulay made a similar case for Hampden. Although a"celebrated Puritan," his creed was of a unique variety. "He wasa man," Macaulay wrote, echoing his characterization of Milton,"in whom virtue showed itself in its mildest and least austereform. With the morals of a Puritan, he had the manners of anaccomplished courtier." Intellect and discernment, moderationand prudence, polish and eloquence, humanity and charity, valorand resolution were all qualities which Macaulay attributed toHampden. These characteristics were distinctive of the "gentle-man" and they "distinguished him from most of the members ofhis sect and his party." Taken together, they made him the idealcitizen: independent and free from personal ambition, he took hiscivic duties seriously, even to the point of bearing arms in defianceof tyranny and defense of liberty. Hampden was, Macaulay wrote,"the only man who united perfect disinterestedness to eminenttalents — the only man who, being capable of gaining the victory for[England], was incapable of abusing that victory when gained." HadHampden survived the Civil War, Macaulay ventured to surmise,the excesses of the Commonwealth might never have taken place.14

Like Milton, Hampden was the model of political conduct:mannered, moderate, disinterested, and dedicated to the publicgood.

Macaulay's historical essays, then, provided him with the meansto express his support for those movements that would culminate inthe repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic emancipationand Parliamentary reform. And yet he was not simply an advocateof popular politics. He stressed that the statesmen responsiblefor bringing about these changes must be versed in aristocraticmanners, for he considered elegance, fine sentiments and

13 Ibid., 342-343.14 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Lord Nugent's Memorials of Hampden" Edinburgh Review,

54 (December, 1831): 505-511, 518-519, 545~549-

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 63politeness remedies against fanaticism. The possession ofaristocratic manners had been the special strength of Milton andHampden; the absence of such refinement had been the weaknessof the Puritans and, during his own age, was one of the failings ofthe philosophical radicals as well. "Metaphysical and politicalscience," he wrote, referring to the Benthamites, "engage theirwhole attention. Philosophical pride has done for them whatspiritual pride did for the Puritans in a former age; it has generatedin them an aversion for the fine arts, for elegant literature, and forthe sentiments of chivalry. It has made them arrogant, intolerant,and impatient of all superiority."15 As the Whigs attempted todefine their position in relation to the radicalism of theBenthamites, Macaulay's conception of the English past providedthem with at least one possible framework. The philosophicalradicals, with their narrow vision and lack of reverence for thepast, were the modern-day counterpart to the Puritans; like theirseventeenth-century predecessors, they were prone to enthusiasm.The Whigs, on the other hand, combined what was best in both theParliamentary and royalist parties - a love of freedom tempered bymoderation.

In making the case that British politics could be opened to non-Anglicans without endangering political stability, the Whigschallenged the monopoly which the Established Church had onpolitical power and confronted the doctrine of the Anglican consti-tution. Robert Southey, one of the Anglican constitution's mostuncompromising defenders in the 1820s, had laid out the doctrine'sunderlying principles: "religion," he wrote in his Colloquies onSociety, "is the basis upon which civil government rests." It was fromreligion that "power derives its authority" and "laws their efficacy."But even more important was Southey's conviction that AnglicanChristianity provided the best means to ensure that the peopleobeyed the government and laws which religion sanctioned. In thisrespect the doctrine extended into the early nineteenth centurythe Elizabethan injunction that no state would rest secure unlessit was religiously uniform. The union of Church and state wouldguarantee that those who were brought up in the Anglican faithwould remain loyal to the constitution of which the Church was an

15 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "The Present Administration," Edinburgh Review, 46(June, 1827): 260—261.

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integral part. For Southey, the religious instruction of the peoplewas one of the state's primary duties precisely because it wouldimprove the moral well-being of the nation as well as encourageobedience to its institutions. Religious dissent, on the other hand,was seditious and morally culpable because it undermined thefoundations of obedience and deprived the people of spiritualguidance.16

Liberal Anglicans, as Brent has shown, typically responded toHigh Church Tories like Southey by arguing that Catholics andProtestant Dissenters could exist freely and equally alongside theEstablished Church without threatening the cohesion of societybecause as Christians they all adhered to the same basic truths.The points of doctrine, discipline and worship that separated thevarious Christian denominations were regarded by these liberals asinessential accretions to a common faith which need not stand inthe way of social harmony. Macaulay could at times argue this way.In his essay on Burghley, for example, he praised the nondogmaticChristianity of the English people, which during the Reformationhad enabled them to accept Catholicism under Mary and thenProtestantism under Elizabeth, and he lamented the fact thatElizabeth had not constructed a comprehensive and tolerantreligious settlement on that basis.17 But for his more theoreticalstatements he chose a secular line of attack. In his essay on Southey,he undermined the Anglican constitution by denying thatChristianity sanctioned the exercise of authority in any but themost general way. The real justification for government, heasserted, was the need that people had for the protection of theirlives and property. It was not a common religion that ensured socialcohesion and loyalty to government, but the requirement of allcitizens for security. In his defense of Jewish emancipation, hedeveloped the point further. Because power was derived fromproperty, not religion, the constitution actually granted Jews powerwhen it permitted them to own property. To deny Jews a seat inParliament was merely to withhold the trappings of what had

16 Robert Southey, Sir Thomas More: Or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, secondedition (London: John Murray, 1831), 1: 349-350. For some of the doctrine's variants, seeG. F. A. Best, "The Protestant Constitution and Its Supporters, 1800-1829," Transactionsof the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 8 (1958): 105-127.

17 Macaulay, "Nare's Memoirs of Lord Burghley,'' 285-293. For the liberal Anglican position, seeBrent, Liberal Anglican Politics, 60—61.

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already been granted in substance. The effect of Macaulay'spolemic was thus to separate politics and religion. Since religiouspreferences had little bearing on one's capacity for politics,Macaulay saw no reason why a Dissenter, Jewish or otherwise,should not take as great an interest in securing property or make asgood a chancellor of the exchequer as an Anglican.18

Macaulay then challenged the paternalism on which theAnglican constitution was predicated. Why should the state, heasked rhetorically, be allowed to interfere with the private lives ofits subjects and provide them with religious instruction when it wasno more likely to arrive at religious truth than they were? Indeed,Macaulay discerned compelling reasons for removing the statealtogether from the realm of private belief. Governments, heargued, were wholly inadequate for dealing with religious questionsbecause they relied on force, not reason, in what were actuallymatters of opinion. History taught that whenever the stateinterfered with religion, persecution was the likely result. In hisessay on Hallam, he emphasized that the Elizabethan preoccu-pation with uniformity had led to the persecution of the Catholicsand Puritans. The Reformation, he argued, was a political actaimed at freeing England from the Papacy and increasing thepower of the monarchy. Arising from such origins, the EstablishedChurch had become the servant of the state and the opponent ofliberty. The Anglican faith was inherently tolerant, acknowledgingthat salvation could be achieved outside its communion, but oncecorrupted by politics it began to persecute.19

Finally, Macaulay refuted the political assumptions on whichthe Anglican constitution stood. The history of the Stuartsdemonstrated that state interference with religion would neitherguarantee political stability nor bring about the moral improve-ment of the nation. The disputes of the seventeenth century showedclearly that the interests of religion and politics were best servedwhen the two remained separate. Laud's attempt to coerce the

18 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Southey's Colloquies on Society" Edinburgh Review, 50(January, 1830): 547-548, and "Civil Disabilities of the Jews," Edinburgh Review, 52(January, 1831): 363-367. For the background to Jewish emancipation see UrsulaHenriques, "The Jewish Emancipation Controversy in Nineteenth-Century Britain,"/Wand Present, 40 (1968): 126-146, and Religious Toleration in England, 1787-1833 (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1961), 175-205.

19 Macaulay, "Southey's Colloquies on Society," 548-552, "Hallam's Constitutional History,"

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Puritans into conformity had turned his victims into rebels whoeventually destroyed the monarchy and the Church which hadpersecuted them. After their victory, the Puritans were obsessedwith the need for moral guidance, but their efforts to impose anaustere faith merely made a mockery of religion and led to thelicentiousness of the Cavaliers following the Restoration.20

Macaulay went on to suggest that the Established Church hadsurvived during the early nineteenth century precisely because ithad refrained from meddling with private consciences, and that aresumption of the policies of Laud, rather than protecting theChurch, would incite a rebellion as severe as that of the Puritans.The best defense of Christianity against the inroads of unbelief, hecontinued, would be to let it stand alone, without the encumbranceof government support, to compete in a free market of ideas: "Thereal security of Christianity," he wrote, "is to be found in itsbenevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the humanheart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself tothe capacity of every human intellect . . . To such a system it canbring no addition of dignity or of strength, that it is part and parcelof the common law . . . The whole history of the Christian religionshows, that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by thealliance of power, than of being crushed by its opposition."21

The position that Macaulay was developing in these essays,written in the years before he assumed his post in India, rep-resented a popular Whiggism that called for a broadening of thepolitical nation to include members of the middle class, regardlessof religious affiliation. Looking back on British affairs from India,Macaulay summed up his position in a long article on Sir JamesMackintosh. Written late in 1834, the essay presented a spiriteddefense of the Whigs and their accomplishments at the Revolution,setting out the principles on which the party had acted in 1688.Though it marked a change in Macaulay's rhetorical strategy - henow praised the Revolution whereas he had disparaged it earlier -his ideological position was essentially the same. The Whiggismthat emerged from its pages was reforming and popular, based onthe premise that political power should be exercised for the public

20 Macaulay , "Southey's Colloquies on Society" 552-553, "Hal lam's Constitutional History"110-112, 152-154.

21 Macaulay, "Southey's Colloquies on Society" 553-555.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 67

good, and, in religious matters, thoroughly latitudinarian. TheRevolution, coming after the Long Parliament and the exclusioncrisis, was the third act in a great popular drama that wouldculminate in the constitutional revolution of 1828, 1829 a n d 1832.With his defense of Mackintosh, Macaulay took one of the Whigs'greatest liabilities - their ambivalence toward the French Revol-ution - and used it to vindicate a tradition of moderate Whiggismthat stretched from Charles James Fox, through Mackintosh, toyounger Whigs like Macaulay himself. It was a tradition that sawthe French Revolution, "in spite of all its crimes and follies," as a"great blessing to mankind," but that also valued order andlegitimate authority. The ability to combine the radical's love ofliberty with the Tory's love of order, Macaulay claimed, was theWhigs' special strength and qualification for office.22

On his return to England, Macaulay threw his full supportbehind Melbourne's ministry. As he told Lansdowne in December1838: "I feel that at this juncture no friend of toleration and oftemperate liberty is justified in withholding his support from theministers . . . I would therefore make some sacrifice of ease, leisure,and money, in order to serve the government in the house ofCommons."23 He represented Edinburgh from 1839 until his defeatin the general election of 1847, and then again from 1852 until heretired from the House in 1856, and he served for several years asMinister at War under Melbourne and as Paymaster General underRussell. Religious issues continued to dominate British politicsduring this period and Macaulay, representing a city with a largeand vocal Dissenting population, could not escape the controversiesover the Maynooth grant, patronage in the Scottish Kirk,Tractarianism and Papal aggression. Meanwhile, within a year ofhis return home, he had set to work on his History of England, andfrom then on he gave the book as much time as his other commit-ments would allow. His first two volumes were published in 1848,the second two in 1855, and a final volume appeared posthumouslyin 1861. Not surprisingly, religious discussions figured prominentlyin them all.

22 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Sir James Mackintosh's History of the Revolution,"Edinburgh Review, 61 (July, 1835): 273-278, 283-322.

23 Macaulay to Lord Lansdowne (19 December 1838), Letters, 3: 266.

68 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

II

Macaulay's personal religion will always remain an enigma. Borninto one of England's great Evangelical families, he seems to haveoutgrown the faith in which he was raised just as he deviated fromhis father's Tory politics. Although there is little evidence in eitherhis journals or letters of an active Christian life, which has led somecommentators to suggest religious indifference, there is also littleevidence of a hostility to Christianity. Indeed, Macaulay seems tohave retained a lasting respect for Christianity as a moral systemcapable of appealing to the human spirit. As he wrote in his essayon Southey, the strength of Christianity was its "benevolentmorality," its "exquisite adaptation to the human heart," its abilityto accommodate the "human intellect."24 What discouragedMacaulay about the Christian faith was not its moral essence, butrather the doctrinal absurdities that had grown up around it. In hisreview of Ranke's History of the Popes, he derided the discipline oftheology. Compared to the natural sciences, theology was aninherently ambiguous enterprise because it dealt with mattersbeyond the reach of human reason. Despite centuries of effort, theworld's theologians, from Socrates to Paley, had still not arrived ata definitive answer to any of their questions.25 But we must becareful not to mistake Macaulay's impatience with theologicalspeculation for an aversion to Christianity itself, and we must notplace him among religion's enemies. Though he applauded thephilosophes for their love of justice, seeing within it a Christianmorality, he also scolded them for attacking Christianity "with arancour and an unfairness disgraceful to men who called them-selves philosophers."26

As Macaulay grappled in the 1840s and 1850s with the practicalproblems of Church and state, he adopted a latitudinarianapproach that was consistent with his nondogmatic appreciation ofthe Christian faith. Acknowledging that Britain was religiouslyplural, he believed that denominational differences could be over-come if people, who otherwise agreed on the basic truths of

24 Macaulay, "Southey's Colloquies on Society" 555.25 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Ranke's History of the Popes - Revolutions of the Papacy,"

Edinburgh Review, 72 (October, 1840): 229-232.26 Ib id . , 253-254.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 69Christianity, would only accept the greatest diversity on thoseinessential matters that divided them. Certainly, for one whodistrusted dogmatic assertions, convinced that more often than notthey were mixed with error, disagreements on such intangibles asthe Eucharist or baptism were never sufficient grounds fordepriving men of their political rights. Politics for Macaulay was apractical affair in which doctrinal disputes had no place. In whatwas perhaps a close approximation to his own position, Macaulayonce praised Francis Bacon for being tolerant and pragmatic at atime when Europe was convulsed with pointless and often destruc-tive theological controversy: "He was, we are convinced, a sincerebeliever in the divine authority of the Christian revelation . . . Heloved to consider that religion as the bond of charity; the curb of evilpassions; the consolation of the wretched; the support of the timid;the hope of the dying. But controversies on speculative points oftheology seem to have engaged scarcely any portion of his attention. .. While the world was resounding with the noise of a disputatiousphilosophy, and a disputatious theology, the Baconian school . . .preserved a calm neutrality, - half scornful, half benevolent, and,content with adding to the sum of practical good, left the war ofwords to those who liked it."27

Macaulay's concern with encouraging an undogmatic approachto religious politics found expression in his History, where hecelebrated the Revolution as an important, though incomplete,triumph of latitudinarian principles. He traced to the 1680s theclear demarcation between the High Church party, anxious topreserve the exclusive rights and privileges of a narrowly definedAnglican Establishment, and the Low Church, or latitudinarianparty, ready to tolerate Dissent and to broaden the doctrines andpractices of the Establishment so as to include as many Protestantsas possible. Leading the latitudinarians was William III, the hero ofMacaulay's History, and in his portrayal of William, Macaulay madehis own liberal sentiments clear. William was a Calvinist, but unlikeother adherents of that faith, he was neither intolerant nordogmatic. He abhorred all persecution, and was flexible concerningforms of church government and worship. He accepted Episcopacyand the Anglican ritual as perfectly legitimate, but did not considerthem in any way essential to Christianity. Other kinds of

27 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Lord Bacon," Edinburgh Review, 65 (July, 1837): 87.

70 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

ecclesiastical government and worship, the Presbyterian andCalvinist for instance, he found just as valid, perhaps evenpreferable. Because William was able to envision a religiouslyplural society, in which a variety of Protestants, sharing a commonChristianity, organized and practiced their faiths in different ways,he was well suited to arrange a compromise between Anglicanismand Dissent.28 His legacy was the religious settlement of 1689, inwhich the English Dissenters were granted toleration and thePresbyterian Kirk was established in Scotland.

In contrast to his admiration for William's pragmatic liberalism,Macaulay deplored the bigotry of James II. He rejected outrightthose interpretations that presented James as a misunderstoodadvocate of toleration. The enthusiasm with which he persecutedthe Presbyterians of Scotland, if nothing else, served to refute suchclaims on his behalf. Macaulay criticized James precisely becausehe tried to advance one religious sect by persecuting all others.Only a genuinely tolerant policy, pursued within the bounds ofthe constitution, could have won for England's Catholic minoritycomplete civil and religious liberty. James, however, resorted topersecution, turning first against the Puritans and then against theChurch of England, only to lose his crown and set back the Catholiccause. Indeed, one of Macaulay's most serious accusations was thatJames, the most influential Catholic of his age, had the means toeliminate the English prejudice against Catholicism, but failedto do so. Had James governed morally and legally, Macaulaysuggested, had he demonstrated that Catholicism was compatiblewith the constitution, then the antipathy which much of the nationfelt toward the Catholics would have abated considerably andemancipation might have come much earlier than it did.29

In his own approach to contemporary religious problems,Macaulay was as undogmatic and as practical as either Bacon orWilliam. "Expediency" was the word he used most often whenaddressing questions of Church and state. As he explained to AdamBlack: "I do not agree with the High Churchmen in thinking thatthe state is always bound to teach religious faith to the people. I donot agree with the Voluntaries in thinking that it is always wrong ina state to support a religious establishment. I think the question a

28 Macaulay, Works, 2: 327-328, 345, 399-400, 4: 15-16.29 Ibid., 1: 518-525, 2: 162-167.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 71question of expediency, to be decided on a comparison of good andevil effects."30 In his critique of Gladstone's State in Its Relations withthe Church, a High Anglican defense of the Establishment, as well asin his Parliamentary speeches, Macaulay extended the principleshe had set down earlier in his article on Southey. While on atheoretical level he may have considered the coupling of govern-ment and religion pernicious, in practice he was presented withcircumstances, arising from the nation's past, that must be treatedpragmatically. In essence Macaulay's arguments were utilitarian.Churches were institutions set up to provide the people withreligious instruction, and whatever relationship they took to thestate, it should be the one best suited to carry out this purpose.Under certain circumstances, where denominational diversity wasfound alongside general affluence, the voluntary system mightmake sense. But in a country such as Ireland, where the vastmajority of the people adhered to a single faith and were too poorto procure religious instruction on their own, the state was justifiedin endowing the Catholic priesthood. The specific doctrinesponsored by the government must be acceptable to the majorityof the nation, for only then would the Church find a receptiveaudience for its teaching. Reasoning such as this, based onconsiderations of expediency rather than doctrine, led Macaulay todefend the Established Churches in England and Scotland becausethey effectively met the spiritual needs of their communities, andto condemn the Protestant Church of Ireland because it rep-resented the faith of only a minority. Though he often defendedreligious establishments, Macaulay was equally sympathetic to theneeds of Dissenters. Whenever the state chose to support a specificreligion, he cautioned, it must not forget that its primary responsi-bility was secular, to protect the lives and property of its subjects. Itmust never persecute, nor should it make use of civil disabilities inorder to enforce conformity. These considerations led Macaulay toconclude that Dissenters should always enjoy the same rights andprivileges as members of the Establishment.31

All through his career Macaulay advocated a politics ofcompromise that he found particularly appropriate to religious

30 Macaulay to Adam Black (20 November 1840), Letters, 3: 346.31 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Church and State," Edinburgh Review, 69 (April, 1839):

273-280. See also his Speech on the Church of Ireland (23 April 1845), Works, 12: 139-153-

72 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

controversy. He believed that such laudable principles as absolutefree trade or religious liberty must be brought into line withreality, modified and diluted by existing circumstances, if they wereto be implemented with any degree of success. Reform was agradual process made up of partial and imperfect measures. Legis-lation of any kind, despite what may be its abstract perfection,would achieve little good if it proved unacceptable to the majorityof the nation. As early as 1832, he explained to a member of theLeeds Political Union that the successful politician must define hisgoals "not according to his views of what might in itself be desir-able, but according to his views of what might be practicable."32

Years later, as member of Parliament for Edinburgh, he confrontedthe intransigence of his electors on the Corn Laws. As an advocateof free trade, he opposed all tariffs on imported grain, but believingin the early 1840s that the total abolition of the Corn Laws was atthe moment unobtainable, he was content to support partialmeasures. Unfortunately, this position drew censure from theEdinburgh Anti-Corn Law Association, which stood for completeabolition and nothing less. Stressing the need for compromise,Macaulay explained his views: ultimate goals, no matter howadmirable, must be subordinate to "practical prudence." Thepolitician who "wish[ed] to effect practical good must often becontent to obtain it by instalments, to purchase support byconcessions, and to mitigate evils which he would gladlydestroy."33

It was the intransigence of religious controversy, however, thattried Macaulay's patience most of all. Hoping to demonstrate theusefulness of compromise, he offered in his History the TolerationBill of 1689 as an example of ecclesiastical legislation worthy ofemulation. The bill was certainly imperfect in theory, acknowl-edging that persecution was still the rule and toleration only theexception, and it was also inconsistent, granting toleration tothe Quaker, for instance, on grounds which it denied to theIndependent. And yet the bill possessed one great advantage: it"removed a vast mass of evil without shocking a vast mass ofprejudice." The contradictions, compromises and partial measureswhich it contained, Macaulay argued, were necessary to ensure its

32 Macaulay to John Smithson (n August 1832), Letters, 2: 178.33 Macaulay to John Howison (1 May 1844), ibid., 4: 185-186.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 73

acceptance by the nation. The Toleration Bill passed both houses ofParliament with ease, whereas the Comprehension Bill, a far moreperfect piece of "legislative workmanship" when viewed abstractly,failed because it was not "adapted to the wants, the feelings, andthe prejudices of the existing generation."34

Macaulay's latitudinarianism did not go unnoticed and notsurprisingly it provoked the more zealous among his audience.Evangelicals of all denominations accused him of religious indiffer-ence. The Christian Observer, for instance, which Macaulay's fatherhad once edited, complained of Macaulay's lack of religious"earnestness" - "no one mode of faith or discipline," the reviewernoted, "except as it is supposed to bear upon the civil interests ofthe community, appears to have much preference in his eyes" - andthen went on to lament that Macaulay was no longer the partisanof "scriptural religion" that his father had been. The Evangelicaland Congregationalist editor of the British Quarterly Review, RobertVaughan, similarly remarked that the cause of true religion hadsuffered because of Macaulay's "practical scepticism". Even theCatholic Rambler was struck by Macaulay's apparent indifference,his refusal to judge on theological questions and his complacentbelief that "all religions are good, if a man be sincere andbenevolent, and say his prayers (in some shape or other)."35 But thekind of sectarian partisanship represented by these reviewers wasprecisely the affliction that Macaulay wanted to see eliminatedfrom Victorian politics. Indeed, one purpose of his History was topromote a model of political conduct that would encouragemoderation by reducing religious controversy. So long as sectarianpassions inflamed the nation, prudent and moderate politics wouldremain unobtainable since Parliamentary government was, forMacaulay, an imperfect process, requiring from its participants awillingness to compromise that was rarely found among religiouscontroversialists. The latitudinarian approach, which set out toremove the disabilities against Catholics and ProtestantDissenters, aimed at tempering sectarian politics by alleviating theinequities on which they prospered. Macaulay further criticized

34 Macaulay, Works, 3: 374-383.35 "Review of Macaulay's History of England," Christian Observer (January, 1850): 61, 64-65.

[Robert Vaughan], Postscript to "The Art of History -Macaulay," British Quarterly Review,23 (April, 1856): 324-325. "Macaulay''s History ofEngland'," Rambler, 3 (February, 1849): 421.

74 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

religious parties because their vision was myopic, focusing on theinterests of one denomination while ignoring what was best for thenation as a whole. Indeed, it was their unreasonable tendency tosacrifice large goods for small gains that annoyed Macaulay most ofall.

in

The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and theextension of the franchise in 1832 gave Dissent an official voice inBritish politics for the first time since the Interregnum. As a resultof these constitutional changes, Dissenters would play a prominentrole in early Victorian politics, and to win their support wouldbecome a problem that would occupy the Whigs in the years tocome. In the 1830s, Melbourne's government appealed successfullyto Dissenters by sponsoring a significant body of legislation,including granting a charter to the London University, breakingthe Establishment's hold on the registration of births, deaths andmarriages, and permitting Nonconforming clergymen to presideover marriages. But this was as far as the Whigs would go, and theirreluctance to press for more extensive reforms eventually costthem the wholehearted support of many Dissenters. Their failureto abolish Church rates in 1837 and to pass an acceptable programfor national, nonsectarian education in 1839 discouraged manyNonconformists, turning them into advocates of voluntaryism anddisestablishment. In the 1840s and 1850s, the Dissenters threatenedto become political adversaries whenever the Whigs displayed toogreat a fondness for the Establishment or began to contemplatethe endowment of Catholicism in Ireland, a policy which manyNonconformists thought violated the voluntary principle.36

Macaulay, no less than his party, found it difficult to please theDissenters. As member of Parliament for Edinburgh, he wasdependent on the city's Nonconformist electorate. On one level, hewas genuinely sympathetic to their needs. He believed that thestate should regard Churchmen and Dissenters as equals, and he

36 For the role of Dissent in early Victorian politics, see: Norman Gash, Reaction andReconstruction in English Politics, 1832-1852 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). G. I. T.Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1832 to 1868 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1977). Richard Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 75

supported everything the Whigs had done for the Dissenters sincethe repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. He saw no reason whyDissenters should pay taxes to finance an Established Churchwhich they chose not to attend, he supported the creation of anonsectarian system of state-funded education and he argued inParliament for the abolition of religious tests in the Scottishuniversities. He thought that positions such as school inspectorsand prison chaplains should be open to Dissenters as well as toChurchmen, and that the Scottish Church should relinquish itsmonopoly on printing the Bible.37

And yet Macaulay never won the Dissenters' complete approval.His pragmatic approach to practical problems and his readinessto accept partial measures led some of Edinburgh's Dissenters toaccuse him and his party of equivocation. Voluntaries took excep-tion to his defense of the Established Churches in England andScotland, and especially to his willingness to endow the Catholicclergy in Ireland. Macaulay replied that the Dissenters' demandswere too inflexible. He grew impatient with their reluctance tocompromise with the Establishment on insignificant matters in orderto win its support for more important reforms such as a nationalsystem of education. The Scottish Dissenters, he complained, wereprepared to sacrifice the public good for "some trifling matters ofpunctilio," and he criticized the narrowness of their vision, theirtendency to regard all issues "merely as Dissenters" and not as"citizens."38 By 1843, Macaulay's stand on religious questions wasat such odds with the opinions of his electors that he consideredEdinburgh, "for the present, lost. The demands of the liberals,heated as they are by religious fanaticism, are such as I will notcomply with. I will not vote for the abolition of the Churches nowestablished in this island; and I will support any well-digested planfor establishing the Catholic Church in Ireland."39 When Macaulayfinally lost his seat for Edinburgh in 1847, he attributed the defeat

37 Macaulay to Adam Black (20 November 1840), to Duncan McLaren (5 December 1840), toDuncan McLaren (11 December 1840), to Andrew Rutherfurd (16 July 1845), to DuncanMcLaren (11 April 1853), to Dr. John Lee (16 July 1853), to Adam Black (? January 1854),to Adam Black (20January 1854), to Frances Macaulay (24 September 1859), Letters, 3: 346,35°-352, 355-358, 4: 262, 5: 325, 341, 377, 379, 6: 238-239. Macaulay, Speech on TheologicalTests in the Scottish Universities (9 July 1845), Works, 12: 163-183.

38 Macaulay to Duncan McLaren (15 June, 5 and 11 December 1840), Letters, 3: 327, 350-352,355-358.

39 Macaulay to Sir James Gibson Craig (24 November 1843), ibid., 4: 161.

76 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

in part to the displeasure he had caused among "Dissenters,Voluntaries, Free Churchmen."40

Macaulay's ambivalence toward the Dissenters no doubt coloredhis assessment of the Puritans in his History. On the one hand, hedismissed the Puritans as religious enthusiasts, noting sardonicallythe varieties of their fanaticism:they mistook their own vindictive feelings for emotions of piety,encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation a disposition tobrood over their wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up intohating their enemies, imagined that they were only hating the enemies ofheaven . . . The extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by hisgait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturnedwhite of his eyes, and nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, byhis peculiar dialect.41

After their victory, the Puritans became dangerous radicals andtheir zeal turned oppressive: "They proved," Macaulay concluded," . . . as intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud had been."42 Andyet Macaulay was equally aware of the Puritans' more attractivefeatures, particularly their achievements in the cause of liberty. Bypointing out how their fanaticism had developed as a reaction tothe persecution they had suffered at the hands of the Church, helessened the severity of that criticism. In the struggle against theStuarts, he noted, it was the Puritans who provided the Parliamen-tary opposition with much of its strength. The image of Cromwellthat emerged from Macaulay's History was as laudatory as theeulogy he had presented many years earlier in his essay on Milton.Cromwell's achievements were prodigious: he built a formidablearmy which defeated the Royalists and brought glory to England,he tried to arrange a compromise between Charles and theParliament, and after the king's execution he restored as muchof England's traditional constitution as circumstances wouldpermit. In the end, Macaulay tried to free Cromwell from thecharges of hypocrisy, fanaticism and republicanism that hadroutinely been leveled at him by the opponents of radicalism andDissent.43

40 Macaulay to Mrs. Char les Trevelyan (30 July 1847), ibid., 4: 341.41 Macaulay, Works, 1: 84-86.42 Ibid., 1: 122-123, 124-126, 133-135, 138, 168-172.43 Ibid., 1: 63, 84, 108, 123-124, 126-129, 130-133, 138-146.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 77In British political rhetoric, Puritanism was an evocative term.

Connoting political extremism, cultural superficiality andhypocrisy, it was frequently applied to those Dissenters or radicalswhose activities placed them outside the nation's traditionalinstitutions. During the French Revolution, for example, EdmundBurke had attempted to discredit Dissenters like the UnitarianRichard Price by linking them with the radicalism of seventeenth-century Puritanism, and John Wilson Croker used the samerhetorical strategy to disparage reformers at the time of the firstReform Bill. By the mid-Victorian years, Matthew Arnold wouldaccuse Nonconformists of Puritanism in order to highlight what hetook to be their cultural provincialism. Macaulay himself was notabove using the term pejoratively, as when he tried to revile thefollowers of Jeremy Bentham by characterizing them as modern-day Puritans. Given the close association in contemporary rhetoricbetween Puritanism and Dissent, it is hardly surprising thatMacaulay's ambivalence toward the Puritans in his History eliciteda double-sided response from Nonconformist readers. On the onehand, they welcomed his favorable interpretation of Cromwell."Full justice is done by Mr. Macaulay to the personal character ofCromwell," declared the Nonconformist Eclectic Review, "nor are wedisposed to take much exception to the view given of his adminis-tration . . . England had never witnessed such a combination oflegislative wisdom with administrative vigour."44 But above all,Dissenters objected to Macaulay's description of the Puritans asfanatics. Walter Bagehot, for instance, writing in the UnitarianNational Review, claimed that Macaulay was simply unable tocomprehend the "passionate eras" of the past. "The whole course ofhis personal fortunes, the entire scope of his historical narrative,show an utter want of sympathy with the Puritan disposition."For a more complete appreciation of Puritan "passion," Bagehotdirected his readers to Thomas Carlyle, whose biography ofCromwell displayed an "instinctive sympathy" toward its subject:"No one will now ever overlook, that in the greater, in the originalPuritans - in Cromwell, for example - the whole basis of thecharacter was a passionate, deep, rich, religious organisation."45

But regardless of Macaulay's ambivalence toward Puritanism,

44 "Macaulay's History ofEngland" Eclectic Review, 25, new series (January, 1849): 8-9.45 [Walter Bagehot], "Mr. Macaulay," National Review, 2 (April, 1856): 364, 368, 370.

78 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

the lasting contribution of his History was to make the case foradmitting Dissenters into the political nation. However fanaticalthey may have been during the Civil War, their conduct atthe Revolution, when they united with Churchmen to defend theconstitution, showed that they had become responsible citizensdeserving the full benefits of English citizenship. Hoping to enlistthe Dissenters in his attack on the Church, James had used thedispensing power, a prerogative considered incompatible withconstitutional government, to grant them toleration. It was in theirinterest as Dissenters to accept this toleration, even though theywould acknowledge in the process that the king possessed absolutepowers. As Macaulay pointed out, James had every reason to expectthe Dissenters to acquiesce in his use of the dispensing power,despite the dangers it posed to good government, since in the pastthe constitution, with its alliance of Church and state, had neverprotected them from persecution. And yet, at this crisis, the mostinfluential Dissenters chose to act not simply as Dissenters, but ascitizens, rallying behind the Church and resisting the king. "At thisconjuncture," Macaulay reflected, "the Protestant Dissenters ofLondon won for themselves a title to the lasting gratitude of theircountry . . . The time had come when it was necessary to make achoice; and the Nonconformists of the City, with a noble spirit,arrayed themselves side by side with the members of the Church indefence of the fundamental laws of the realm."46

Macaulay's account of the Revolution, then, served as anargument for granting Nonconformists full membership in thepolitical community and as an illustration of the responsibilitiesthat such citizenship entailed. One of Macaulay's principalcomplaints about the Dissenters had been that their denomi-national interests often blinded them to their obligations ascitizens. At the Revolution, however, they had for once acted in away that was not narrowly sectarian. Responsible conduct,Macaulay was arguing, demanded from the Dissenters a willingnessto compromise with others, and above all with the Anglican Church,that they rarely exhibited. In support of his case, Macaulay pointedto the example of the Presbyterian Richard Baxter, who was amongDissenters what the latitudinarians were among Churchmen: "He

46 Macaulay, Works, 2: 367-399, 508-509, 517-521.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 79heartily concurred in the Restoration, and was sincerely desirous tobring about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians.For, with a liberality rare in his time, he considered questions ofecclesiastical polity as of small account when compared with thegreat principles of Christianity, and had never, even when prelacywas most odious to the ruling powers, joined in the outcry againstBishops . . . His political opinions, in spite of the oppression whichhe and his brethren had suffered, were moderate."47 It was preciselythis kind of moderation that he found so lamentably absentamong the Scottish Dissenters and that his History aimed toencourage.

IV

Ireland was the other great area of religious conflict that Macaulayand the Whigs had to contend with in the 1830s and 1840s. An Irishminority in the Commons after 1833 and the growing strength ofO'ConnelPs movement for the repeal of the union ensured thatthe problem would receive immediate attention. Determined topreserve the union at all costs, the Whigs hoped to win theconfidence of the Irish by redressing at least some of theirgrievances and, in particular, by reforming the Protestant Churchof Ireland. They were prepared to reduce the size of the IrishEstablishment, and the more liberal among them were ready toappropriate its surplus revenue for purposes benefiting the entirenation. They were willing to commute the tithe and they seriouslyconsidered endowing the Catholic clergy. For many Tories, how-ever, concessions to Catholicism were unacceptable attacks on theIrish Establishment. Convinced that a common Protestant Churchwas the principal bond uniting England and Ireland, the Torieswere afraid that concessions to Catholicism would represent thefirst steps toward disestablishment and the eventual rupture ofthe union. A strong conservative and Protestant opposition in theLords ensured that the Whigs would only succeed partially in theirefforts at Irish Church reform. They reduced the Establishment in1833, commuted the tithe in 1838 and supported Peel's grant tothe Catholic seminary at Maynooth in 1845. But t o appropriate

47 Ibid., 1: 513.

80 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Irish Church revenue or endow the Catholic clergy remainedimpossible.48

Macaulay emerged from the Parliamentary debates of the early1830s a staunch upholder of the union. Repeal, he argued, would notsolve Ireland's problems since most of these had originated beforethe union itself. During the debates on the Coercion Bill in 1833, herecommended that force be used in Ireland to maintain the union,and he urged the suspension of habeas corpus and trial by jury inorder to put an end to the disturbances caused by the tithe warand the movement for repeal. But Macaulay was not simply aspokesman for English supremacy. Like other Whigs, he advocatedreform as the only way to create a durable relationship betweenthe two nations. In 1833, he endorsed the Whigs' Irish ChurchTemporalities Bill, which called for a significant reduction inthe number of bishoprics and active parishes, He considered therevenue of the Irish Church to be "public property" and believedthat "a considerable portion of the church property ought . . . to beapplied to public services . . . "49

After returning to English politics in 1839, Macaulay continued topromote measures aimed at removing the inequalities that marredthe religious settlement in Ireland. His position was consistent withhis latitudinarian principles and remarkably farsighted. At leastonce he hinted privately that he was prepared to disestablish theChurch of Ireland. "Let us once get rid of those [Corn] laws and ofthe Irish Church," he wrote to his sister in 1839, "and I shall beginto think of being a Conservative."50 But most of the time headvocated using the property of the Irish Establishment to endowthe Catholic priesthood, though he knew that for the moment thistoo was impractical. As he explained to Macvey Napier in 1843:

48 For the Whig response to the Irish problem, see: A. D. Kriegel, "The Irish Policy of LordGrey's Government," English Historical Review, 86 (1971): 22-45. Mary D. Condon, "TheIrish Church and the Reform Ministries," Journal of British Studies, 3 (1964): 120-142.Donald Harman Akenson, The Church of Ireland: Ecclesiastical Reform and Revolution,1800-1885 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 146-194. Brent, Liberal AnglicanPolitics, 65-103. Machin , Politics and the Churches. Angus Macintyre, The Liberator: DanielO'Connell and the Irish Party, 1830-1847 (London: H a m i s h Hami l ton , 1965).

49 Macaulay, Speech on Repeal of the Union with Ireland (16 February 1833), Works, 11:519-521, 523-526, Speech on the Disturbances (Ireland) Bill (28 February 1833) a n dSpeech on Church Reform, Ireland (1 April 1833), Speeches by theRt. Hon. Thomas BabingtonMacaulay, M.P. (New York: Redfield, 1853), 1: 217-218, 239. Macaulay to Joseph Lees(15 March 1832), Letters, 2: 116.

50 Macaulay to Frances Macaulay (29 January 1839), Letters, 3: 275.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 81

My own view is this. I do not on principle object to the paying of the IrishCatholic priests. I regret that such a step was not taken in 1829. I wouldeven now gladly support any well digested plan which might be likely tosucceed. But I fear that the difficulties are insurmountable.

And he continued:I . . . would transfer a large part of the Irish Church revenues from theProtestants to the Catholics. For such a measure I should think it my dutyto vote, though I were certain that my vote would cost me my seat inparliament.51

Speaking in Parliament on the condition of Ireland in 1843, n e

pronounced the Irish Church indefensible since it had failed in itsmain purpose of providing the people with religious instruction,and he recommended that it be reduced further to reflect the actualsize of Ireland's Protestant community.52 He voted for theMaynooth grant in 1845, and spoke in favor of an amendment thatwould provide funding for the seminary out of the surplus revenueof the Establishment. He condemned the Irish Church as a "mostabsurd" institution because it served only a small portion of thepopulation and yet received the exclusive support of the state.Addressing the Tories' fears that any alteration in the IrishEstablishment would threaten the union, Macaulay suggestedthat the Church's unpopularity, in fact, posed the greatest obstacleto a peaceful settlement in Ireland. The best way to safeguardthe union would be to respect the religious preferences of the Irishpeople.53

In his History, Macaulay approached the Irish problem in amanner consistent with his other pronouncements. He provided hisreaders with an interpretation of the Anglo-Irish past designed inpart to reconcile the two nations, moderate the religious conflictand strengthen the union. But no matter how genuinely Macaulaymay have intended his History to mediate between religious andnational parties, it was little calculated to appeal to an Irish orCatholic audience since it looked at the seventeenth-centuryorigins of the Irish problem from a perspective that wasunabashedly Protestant and English. A condescending belief in the

51 Macaulay to Macvey Napier (25 November 1843), ibid., 4: 162.52 Macaulay, Speech on the State of Ireland (7 July 1843), Speeches, 2: 168-169.53 Macaulay, Speech on the Church of Ireland (23 April 1845), Works, 12: 139, 142, 154-157.

82 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

superiority of Protestantism colored everything he wrote aboutthe Anglo-Irish past. Equating Protestantism with progress, hemade Catholicism synonymous with material, political andintellectual backwardness. "From the time when the barbariansoverran the Western Empire," he asserted, "to the time of therevival of letters, the influence of the Church of Rome had beengenerally favorable to science, to civilization, and to goodgovernment. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt thegrowth of the human mind has been her chief object. ThroughoutChristendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge,in freedom, in wealth, and in the arts of life, has been made in spiteof her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to herpower."54

Catholics, as we might expect, considered these observationsoffensive. John Henry Newman, for one, felt called upon to answerthe charge that Catholicism promoted backwardness.55 C. W.Russell, the Irish Catholic co-editor of the Dublin Review, grewincreasingly indignant at Macaulay's often "gratuitous" anti-Catholicism and at his unfair treatment of such prominentCatholics as James II and Mary of Modena. Russell, it seems, hadexpected something different. Aware of Macaulay's reputation asan outspoken advocate of Irish reform, he had looked forward to ahistory that would show greater "liberality" toward the Irish andCatholics. Instead, he was given a narrative permeated withProtestant "bigotry."56 The Catholic Rambler also grew disillusionedwith Macaulay's work. Reviewing his first volume, it deemedMacaulay more "impartial" on religious matters than mostProtestant historians even though his discussion of Catholicism wasdistorted by "misconception, error, and irreligious ideas." But assubsequent volumes appeared, the Rambler became more and morecritical of their "anti-Catholic animus" accusing Macaulay of

54 Ibid., i: 49-50.55 J o h n H e n r y N e w m a n , Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, n e w

impression (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1918), 229-260. Although Newman nevermentioned Macaulay in this lecture, Macaulay was certain that he was its intendedtarget: "Read among other things Newman's lectures just published . . . One lecture isevidently directed against me, though not by name; and I am quite willing that thepublic should judge between us."Journal (12 October [1850]).

56 [C . W . R u s s e l l ] , " M a c a u l a y ' s History of England," Dublin Review, 26 ( June , 1849): 393-394,396 -400 , 404 -433 , a n d " M a c a u l a y ' s History of England? Dublin Review, 40 ( M a r c h , 1856):158-168.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 83

misrepresenting facts and choosing his authorities selectively inorder to malign Catholics such as James II, Louis XIV and theJesuits.57

Macaulay's History was also informed by an Anglo-Saxon ethno-centrism that drew conceptually on the developmental approach tosociety found in the writings of the Scottish conjectural historians.Beneath the religious conflict in Ireland, Macaulay saw a muchdeeper antagonism between "races," between the Anglo-SaxonEnglish who had conquered and the Celtic Irish who hadsuccumbed. These two races, he asserted, were at "widely differentstages of civilization," a difference in development that heattributed to racial characteristics, religion and the accidents ofhistory. Implicit in his analysis was the conviction that theseventeenth-century Celts shared more in common with primitivesocieties than they did with their more advanced Anglo-Saxoncontemporaries. To contrast the English colonizers with the Irishcolonized, Macaulay frequently made use of Victorian anthro-pological stereotyping, referring to the Irish as "savage" or"aboriginal," and giving them habits such as laziness, slovenliness,drunkenness or polygamy often associated with other conqueredpeoples of the empire.58 This developmental approach providedMacaulay with one possible way of conceptualizing the Irishproblem. Before a lasting reconciliation between the two nationscould take place, the Irish must achieve the same level ofcivilization as the English. As always, England provided thestandard against which Ireland was to be judged: "There couldnot be equality," Macaulay claimed, "between men who lived inhouses, and men who lived in sties, between men who were fedon bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between men whospoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets, andmen who, with perverted pride, boasted that they could notwrithe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in

57 "Macaulay's History of England" Rambler, 3 (February, 1849): 422,425, and 3 (March, 1849):523. "Macaulay's History ofEngland" Rambler, 17 (February, 1856): 149-155, and 17 (March,1856): 208-212.

58 Macaulay, Works, 2: 289, 291. For the developmental views of the Scottish historians, seeJ. W. Burrow, Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1966), 10-16, and for their influence on Macaulay, seeBurrow, Liberal Descent, 41. For other examples of how the Victorians stereotyped the Irishin this way, see L. Perry Curtis, Jr., Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971).

84 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

which the Advancement of Learning and the Paradise Lost werewritten."59

Macaulay, however, believed in the union, and at least onepurpose of his History was to present an interpretation of the Anglo-Irish past that would help reconcile the two nations. Despite hisdeep-seated religious and ethnic prejudices, he saw no reason whyin the long run England and Ireland could not be brought togetherfor their mutual benefit. In formulating such an interpretation,however, Macaulay had to confront the anti-Catholicism that hadprovided so much of the impetus behind the events of 1688.Spokesmen for the Establishment had typically represented theRevolution as the triumph of Protestantism over Catholicism inboth England and Ireland. Indeed, members of the ProtestantAscendancy regarded William as a hero precisely because hisvictory over James had finally ensured their supremacy, and thelesson they drew from the Revolution was that Protestant interestsrequired the subjugation of Irish Catholicism. In the politicalrhetoric of the Anglo-Irish, William was presented as a defender ofthe faith, and the Revolution was used to sanction a century anda half of Protestant dominion. As one perceptive spokesman forthe Ascendancy remarked, referring specifically to Macaulay: "Theadvocate and admirer of the Whig William of England, is underthe necessity of being the advocate and admirer of the OrangeWilliam of Ireland."60

But Macaulay never intended to apologize for the Ascendancy,and in his History he reversed this Protestant rhetoric by demon-strating that intolerance toward Catholics was not intrinsic to theWhiggism of the Revolution. In 1688, he argued, the Whigs pursuedanti-Catholic policies because the king gave them no alternative. Solong as James persisted in using Catholic appointees to subvert theconstitution, the Whigs had no option but to restrict all political,ecclesiastical and military offices to Protestants. This apparentanti-Catholicism, Macaulay implied, was not essential toWhiggism, which was for the most part latitudinarian, but wasrather the unfortunate product of circumstances unique to the1680s.61 Macaulay then went on to justify the anti-Catholicism of

59 Macaulay, Works, 2: 296-297.60 " M a c a u l a y ' s History of Englandr," Dublin University Magazine', 47 ( F e b r u a r y , 1856): 152.61 Macaulay, Works, 2: 403-409.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 85the Revolutionary settlement in Ireland. It was necessary, heclaimed, because James, whose common religion with the Irish andcommon nationality with the English should have made him anideal mediator, had failed to arrange a compromise betweenthe contending parties. Had he guaranteed the English settlers thepossession of their lands, compensated the Irish for their losses,governed justly without favoring one religion over the other, andenlisted the Catholic hierarchy in the cause of peace, then relationsbetween the two nations might have improved. But instead, Jamesdid the opposite. He attempted to reverse the existing propertyarrangements, reassert Irish supremacy, promote Catholicismexclusively and use an Irish army to subvert the English consti-tution. It was these myopic policies, Macaulay argued, not theanti-Catholicism of the Whigs, that brought ruin to Ireland.62

The lessons of the Revolution finally taught that England andIreland could be united much as England and Scotland had beenbrought together after the union of 1707. Macaulay found theScottish parallel particularly germane since in the case of Scotlanda religious conflict similar to the one dividing England and Irelandhad been overcome. For much of the seventeenth century, hepointed out, the Stuarts had tried to impose Episcopacy on thereluctant Scottish Presbyterians, and the consequences of thisintolerance had been nearly a hundred years of animosity.Following the Revolution, however, the Whigs had abandoned thispolicy. Realizing that harmony between the kingdoms could only beachieved if the Scots were allowed to worship in their own way, theWhigs established Presbyterianism as the state religion ofScotland, which brought the ecclesiastical conflict to an end andlaid the groundwork for political unification. The union of 1707,Macaulay wrote, "has been a blessing because, in constituting oneState, it left two Churches . . . Had there been an amalgamation ofthe hierarchies, there never would have been an amalgamationof the nations."63 For Macaulay, the resolution of the Scottishproblem was the crowning achievement of William's latitudinarianprinciples. His undogmatic approach to ecclesiastical questions andhis ties to both Presbyterianism and Episcopacy had enabled him tonegotiate between the two religious parties. "He was the King ofa prelatical kingdom," Macaulay explained: "He was the Prime

62 Ibid., 2: 287, 294-298, 5: 118-124. 63 Ibid., 4: 9-13.

86 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Minister of a presbyterian republic . . . His conscience was neutral.For it was his deliberate opinion that no form of ecclesiastical politywas of divine institution . . . Which form of [church] governmentshould be adopted was in his judgment a question of mereexpediency."64 The lesson for Ireland was obvious. Before Englandand Ireland could be joined peacefully and beneficially, the policy ofmaintaining a Protestant Establishment in Ireland enjoyingexclusive rights and privileges must come to an end, andCatholicism must receive at least a measure of state recognition.

The breakdown of the Anglican constitution between 1828 and 1832raised the question of whether the state should retain the authorityto regulate the spiritual and temporal affairs of the Church for thebenefit of the nation. So long as the Anglican Establishment hadenjoyed a virtual monopoly on political power, the Erastianrelationship between Church and state had rarely troubled theclergy. But once the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts,Catholic emancipation and the Reform Act had broken thatmonopoly, High Anglicans grew alarmed since the Church nowseemed to be at the mercy of a Parliament in which Catholics orDissenters might play a significant role. Reacting to these reforms,High Anglicans began to challenge the Erastianism of the consti-tution, demanding that the Church should acquire a spiritualjurisdiction independent of the state, and pronouncing underTractarian influence the divine nature of its Episcopal governmentand the inviolability of its apostolic succession. These ecclesiasticscontinued to regard the union of Church and state as necessary but,challenged by the growth of liberalism after 1832, they argued thatonly a greater autonomy in spiritual matters would protect theChurch from the religious indifference of the politicians.65

Macaulay, whose position on the relationship between Churchand state was thoroughly Erastian, opposed the aspirations of theHigh Anglican party. Between 1830 and 1850, as Whigs and High

« Ibid., 4: I5.65 Machin, Politics and the Churches, 26-27, 75-91. E. A. Varley, The Last of the Prince Bishops:

William Van Mildert and the High Church Movement of the Early Nineteenth Century (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992). Perry Butler, Gladstone: Church, State, and Tractarianism:A Study of His Religious Ideas and Attitudes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 87Churchmen clashed frequently over clerical appointments,Macaulay consistently gave his support to the liberal candidates.He sympathized with Thirlwall, for instance, who in 1834 had beendeprived of his assistant tutorship at Trinity College for backinga measure which would have made it possible for Dissenters toreceive degrees at Cambridge. "When you see Thirlwall," Macaulaywrote from India, "tell him that I congratulate him from my soul onhaving suffered in so good a cause: and that I would rather havebeen treated as he has been treated on such an account than havethe Mastership of Trinity. There would be some chance for theChurch, if we had more Churchmen of the same breed — worthysuccessors of Leighton and Tillotson."66 The most celebrateddisputes, however, were over the Hampden and Gorham cases.High Churchmen objected to the appointment of the liberalAnglican Hampden to the Regius Professorship of Divinity atOxford in 1836, complaining that it was an unwarranted intrusionby the state into the spiritual affairs of the Church. They con-sidered Hampden an unsuitable candidate, finding his views ondoctrine heterodox and his advocacy of admitting Dissenters toOxford a dangerous threat to the Anglican integrity of the univer-sity. Macaulay, however, applauded the appointment and censuredthose who were harassing Hampden, calling them the "genuinesuccessors, in everything but wit and eloquence of South andAtterbury."67 Years later, in 1850, Macaulay again revealed hisErastian tendencies when he praised the Privy Council for over-ruling the ecclesiastical courts and upholding the presentation ofGorham to the living at Brampford Speke. In contrast to HighChurchmen, who denounced the government for meddling inChurch business, Macaulay termed the Council's judgment"excellent."68

Macaulay's Erastianism became most apparent, however, in hisstand on the patronage controversy in Scotland. At issue waswhether lay patrons or local congregations should have the finaldecision in clerical appointments. In 1834, the General Assemblyof the Kirk, supporting the rights of the congregation, passed ameasure enabling parishioners to reject ministers appointed by lay

66 Macaulay to Thomas Flower Ellis (15 December 1834), Letters, 3: 112.67 Macaulay to Lord Mahon (31 December 1836), ibid., 3: 206.68 Macaulay to Thomas Flower Ellis (9 March 1850), ibid., 5: 99.

88 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

patrons. The Court of Session, however, the ultimate civil court inScotland, took the opposite side and in 1838 declared against themeasure, thereby initiating a conflict between the ecclesiasticaljurisdiction of the General Assembly and the civil authority of thestate. Spokesmen for the anti-patronage party in the Assembly, likeHigh Churchmen in England, soon began proclaiming the indepen-dence of the Kirk.69 Macaulay was drawn into the controversy as amember of Parliament for Edinburgh. Though inclined to supportthe rights of the congregation on the grounds of utility, he objectedto the High Church pretensions of the anti-patronage party. As heexplained to Adam Black: "[if] the legislature can make the churchmore useful to the country, the legislature is bound to do so. And onthese grounds I am favorable to a settlement of the non-intrusion[patronage] question on the basis of a popular veto. But to the highpretensions put forth by a portion of the church, I am decidedlyopposed. I think that the veto or some similar measure may be adesirable measure, but I deny the claim to independence whichthe Established Church sets up against the state."70 Reassertinghis position even more forcefully, he underscored its essentialErastianism: "While the State and the Church are connected, theState must control the Church. It ought indeed to exercise itspowers in such a way as to make the Church in the highest degreeuseful to the people. But it must control. And I will never putthe State under the feet of that Church which it feeds out of thecommon funds of the empire."71

In his History, Macaulay endeavored to undermine the HighAnglican rhetoric of his contemporaries by asserting thatHigh Church principles, having entered Anglican thinking only inthe seventeenth century, represented a pernicious departure fromthe precedents established at the Reformation. Examining thesixteenth-century origins of the Anglican Church, Macaulayconfidently affirmed that the English reformers were Erastians whoconceived of the monarch as the temporal and spiritual head of theChurch:

69 For the background to this controversy, see G. I. T. Machin, "The Disruption andBritish Politics," Scottish Historical Review, 51 (1972): 20-51, and Politics and the Churches,118-147.

70 Macaulay to Adam Black (20 November 1840), Letters, 3: 346.71 Macaulay to Duncan McLaren (30 January 1841), ibid., 3: 364-365.

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 89

The King was to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicar of God, theexpositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental graces. Hearrogated to himself the right of deciding dogmatically what was orthodoxdoctrine and what was heresy, of drawing up and imposing confessions offaith, and of giving religious instruction to his people. He proclaimed thatall jurisdiction, spiritual as well as temporal, was derived from him alone,and that it was in his power to confer episcopal authority, and to take itaway.72

Macaulay further insisted, contrary to the claims of High Church-men and Tractarians, that the founders of the Church had neverregarded Episcopacy as a divine institution, but chose to preserve itbecause at the time it was expedient to do so.73 High Churchprinciples, then, were not intrinsic to Anglicanism, but wereactually a seventeenth-century deviation from precedent thatreached their epitome under Laud. Churchmen, relaxing theirhatred of Roman Catholicism and directing it against the Puritans,began under the Stuarts to defend Episcopacy as a divine insti-tution and denounce dissenting alternatives as illegitimate.Practices previously associated with Roman Catholicism enteredthe Anglican ritual, while Anglican theology, retreating from itsoriginal Calvinism, became increasingly Arminian.74 After theRestoration, High Church principles remained dominant, findingexpression in the penal laws against Dissenters and in theEstablishment's advocacy of passive obedience and non-resistance,doctrines Macaulay considered incompatible with good govern-ment.75

What worried High Churchmen most about the Erastianrelationship between Church and state was the possibility that thegovernment might, as a result of Catholic emancipation, chooseto weaken the Protestantism of the Establishment. These fearsseemed confirmed in 1833, when the Whigs began tampering withthe temporalities of the Irish Church. As evidence of how seriousthe present danger was, spokesmen for the Establishment pointedto the disaster that had nearly destroyed the Church in 1688, whenJames had used the royal supremacy in order to subvert itsProtestantism. John Wilson Croker, writing in the Quarterly Reviewamid the crisis over the Irish Church, used a number of simplistic

72 Macaulay, Works, i: 57-58, 60-61. 73 Ibid., 1: 55, 78-80.74 Ibid., 1: 78-84, 92-93. 75 Ibid., 1: 73-76, 78-84, 168, 184-188.

90 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

analogies to denounce the Whigs: the repeal of the Test andCorporation Acts, Catholic emancipation, the ParliamentaryReform Act and the attempt to open Oxford and Cambridge to non-Anglicans all found seventeenth-century parallels. Like James'stoleration of Dissenters, his efforts to promote Catholics, hischanges in the Corporations and his attempt to appoint Catholicsto positions in the universities, they were all intended to "overthrowthe Church."76 Macaulay answered these High Church accusationsby pointing out that the constitutional changes brought about bythe Revolution had made it impossible for a monarch to make alter-ations in the national faith that were not accepted by Parliament asbeneficial. Not only was the line of succession now restricted toProtestants, but "the power of the House of Commons in the statehad become so decidedly preponderant that no sovereign, whatevermight have been his opinion or his inclinations, could have imitatedthe example of James."77

Macaulay reserved some of his harshest words for the HighChurchmanship of the Oxford Movement. Like other Whigs, heconsidered the Tractarians a Roman Catholic sect within theAnglican Church.78 As Newman's conversion to Rome in 1845and the publication of Tract XC - which Macaulay termed "thequintessence of Jesuitism"79 - made the Oxford Movement'sCatholic tendencies all the more apparent, Macaulay's distaste forboth Catholicism and the Tractarians became compounded. "Odd,"he noted in his journal, at the height of the crisis over Papalaggression, "that I begin to feel the same disgust at the AngloCatholic & Roman Catholic cants which people after the Restor-ation felt for the Puritan cant. Their saints' days begin to affect meas the Puritan Sabbath affected drunken Barnaby."80 Macaulay had

76 [John Wilson Croker], "Revolutions of 1688 and 1831," Quarterly Review, 51 (June, 1834):499-505-

77 Macaulay, Works, 2: 239-240, 248-250, 405, 409.78 For the Whigs' views on the Tractarians, see [Henry Rogers], "Puseyism, or the Oxford

Tractarian School," Edinburgh Review, 77 (April, 1843): 501-562. Macaulay found thearticle "excellent," which suggests that it may be a fair representation of his ownopinions on the Oxford Movement. Macaulay to Charles Bird Smith (3 July 1843), Letters,4: 128-129.

79 Macaulay, Journal (28 October [1857]).80 Macaulay, Journal (30 October [1850]). For the so-called Papal aggression, see: J. B.

Conacher, "The Politics of the 'Papal Aggression Crisis', 1850-1851," Canadian CatholicHistorical Association Report (1959), 13-27. Machin, Politics and the Churches, 210-228. For thetendency of other Whigs, notably Lord John Russell, to see Tractarianism and Papal

Macaulay and Victorian religious controversy 91

always felt an aversion to any form of clerical domination, whetherby the Catholic priesthood, traditional High Churchmen oradherents to the Oxford Movement. The spread of Tractarianpractices in the Anglican Church beginning in the late 1840s,combined with the Pope's decision in 1850 to restore the Catholichierarchy in England, seemed to him unmistakable evidence of aclerical resurgence.

In his History, Macaulay used his discussion of the Nonjurors todismiss the Oxford Movement. There had always been an affinitybetween the Tractarians and those Nonjuring Churchmen who hadrefused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary on thegrounds that resistance to James had violated the doctrine ofpassive obedience. In a sermon preached in 1837 on the anniversaryof the Glorious Revolution, the Tractarian E. B. Pusey had estab-lished the connection between the two parties. Conjuring up themoribund notions of passive obedience and non-resistance, Puseyhad denounced the Revolution as a national sin and rehabilitatedthe churchmanship of the Nonjurors.81 Like the Tractarians, theNonjurors had believed in the real efficacy of the sacraments andwere vehemently anti-Erastian. When ordered by William torelinquish their livings, they had defied the king, arguing that thecivil authority could not take from them what had been sanctionedby ordination. For Macaulay, the Nonjurors, and by analogy theirmodern counterparts, were little more than fanatics. Their justifi-cation for the inviolability of the apostolic succession was specious.Their dedication to the principles of non-resistance and passiveobedience was absurd because it rested on an arbitrary interpret-ation of the Scriptures and because it led to the unreasonableconclusion that allegiance was due to a deposed tyrant rather thanto a virtuous ruler in actual possession of power. At best theNonjurors were a marginal movement among the clergy, at worstthey were schismatics who threatened to divide the Church byestablishing a rival hierarchy.82

Macaulay's antipathy toward the Nonjurors, with its implied

aggression as two prongs of the same attack on English Protestantism, see G. I. T.Machin, "Lord John Russell and the Prelude to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill," Journal ofEcclesiastical History, 25 (1974): 278-284.

81 [Herman Merivale], "Dr Pusey's Sermon on the Fifth of November " Edinburgh Review, 66(January, 1838): 396—398, 409-411.

82 Macaulay, Works, 3: 393-397, 4: 205-214, 230-231, 5: 41-45.

92 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

criticism of the Tractarians, was only to be expected in a work thatchampioned the latitudinarianism of the Revolution's religioussettlement. Macaulay's approach to the issues of Church and statehad been shaped by his experiences as a practical politiciangrappling with the controversies of the 1830s and 1840s, as well asby his scholar's knowledge of the sectarian strife of the seventeenthcentury. He was aware that circumstances, rooted in the nation'spast, always placed limits on the options available to politicians.Tracing the sectarian controversies of his own day back to theseventeenth-century crises that had left England religiously plural,he was able to appreciate the extent of these circumstances. TheAnglican Church, history showed, despite its obvious failings, wasintimately connected with the growth of the English nation andcould not be eliminated without removing at great cost a vitalelement of the national character. But history also taught thatEngland contained Dissenters who had made meaningful con-tributions to the nation's past, both during the Civil War and at theRevolution, that Scotland was Presbyterian, and that Ireland, forgood or for ill, would remain Catholic. For Macaulay, the religioussettlement of 1689, the culmination of William's latitudinarianpolicies, had demonstrated how political stability could be achievedin the face of such diversity. Applied to the problems of theVictorian age, it demanded a liberal Establishment in which theclerical pretensions of the High Churchmen and Tractarians hadno place.

The attitudes informing Macaulay's approach to sectarianpolitics - pragmatism, toleration for Dissent, scorn for theProtestant Church of Ireland, acceptance of the majorityEstablishments in England and Scotland, dislike of HighChurchmen and Tractarians -were characteristic of mid-VictorianWhiggism. In the decades following Macaulay's death in 1859,religious controversy continued to play an important role in Britishpolitics as the transition from the confessional to the secular statewas an uneasy one. Liberalism, as it was redefined in the 1860s and1870s, continued to address questions of Church and state, andMacaulay's History, given its immense readership, helped in thisprocess by imparting an older Whiggism to the new Gladstonianera.

CHAPTER 3

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent

The rise of Protestant Dissent as a political force and effectivechallenge to the supremacy of the Anglican Establishment was oneof the most important developments of the Victorian age. Therepeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and the Reform Actof 1832, by removing the formal barriers against the participation ofDissenters in national politics and by transferring Parliamentaryrepresentation to areas where Nonconformity was strong, gaveDissenters a larger role in shaping English affairs than they hadenjoyed before, except perhaps during the mid-seventeenth centuryunder the Commonwealth. The Municipal Corporation Act of 1835increased further the influence of Dissent by breaking down theAnglican exclusiveness of local government. By 1833, Noncon-formists had formulated the principal demands that would informtheir politics for the next fifty years. Seeking parity with theEstablishment, they insisted on exemption from Church rates,the right to conduct marriages and burials according to their ownceremonies, the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths,the removal of religious tests at Oxford and Cambridge, and thegranting of a charter to the nondenominational London University.Throughout the nineteenth century, Dissenters found supportersfor their cause among Whigs and Liberals, although the alliancewas never an easy one. During the 1830s, Melbourne's governmentsattempted to meet the Dissenters' demands while at the same timemaintaining the ascendancy of the Anglican Church. In 1836,London University received its charter, the civil registration ofbirths, marriages and deaths was established and Dissentingministers obtained the right to preside over marriages. But theinability of the Whigs to deal successfully with the vexing problemsof education and Church rates discouraged many Nonconformists,

93

94 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

some of whom, becoming increasingly militant, adopted thevoluntary principle and began to agitate for disestablishment.1

As Dissenters began to question the prominence of the AnglicanEstablishment, they looked back to the seventeenth century forinspiration and direction. It was hardly surprising that they shouldhave based an ideology of Dissent on the Stuart past, for it wasduring the seventeenth century that the Puritans emerged as apowerful force, confronted the Church of Archbishop Laud and themonarchy of Charles I, triumphed briefly under the Common-wealth and Protectorate, only to be excluded at the Restoration,giving rise to modern Dissent. As the disabilities restricting theactivities of non-Anglicans were gradually removed in the nine-teenth century, Dissenters began to foresee a time when they mightexercise the same degree of influence on contemporary society astheir predecessors had in the mid-seventeenth century. ThePuritan past would provide Dissenters with a set of traditions,heroes and principles that would give their cause both legitimacyand direction. In answer to their detractors, Dissenters could nowlook to the past and insist that they were confronting the AnglicanEstablishment in order to advance the movement for civil andreligious liberty which had begun when the Puritans in Parliamentfirst challenged the presumptions of the Stuarts.

In the decades after Waterloo it was the descendants of theeighteenth-century Rational Dissenters who first took a scholarlyinterest in the radical politics and religion of the Commonwealthand Protectorate. A product of the English Enlightenment,Rational Dissent had taken hold chiefly among the Presbyteriansand, to a much lesser extent, the Independents. Believing in theself-sufficiency of the Scriptures and the individual's right to freeinquiry, these Dissenters from the Anglican Establishment rejectedthe authority of church creeds and looked to reason as theguarantor of religious truth. This conviction eventually brought

1 For the role of Dissent in British politics during the first half of the nineteenth century,see: Norman Gash, Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832-1852 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1965). Richard Brent, Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion, andReform, 1830-1841 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). G. I. T. Machin, Politics and the Churchesin Great Britain, 1832 to 1868 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 95the doctrine of the Trinity into question and led the RationalDissenters increasingly toward heterodoxy. Since it entailed anapproach to theological questions rather than a specific body ofdogma, Rational Dissent generated a variety of doctrinal positions,including the Arianism of Richard Price, the Socinianism of JosephPriestley, and even the atheism of William Godwin.2 The existenceof the Test and Corporation Acts, which made it difficult forDissenters to participate in politics, and the Blasphemy Act, whichbanned the expression of non-Trinitarian ideas, ensured thatRational Dissenters would oppose the Establishment and embraceradical politics. They led the movement for the repeal of the TestActs, backed efforts to reform the franchise, and sympathized withthe American colonies in their bid for independence. The outbreakof the French Revolution, which they welcomed, exacerbated theirdifferences with the Establishment as Burke and others drew anexplicit parallel between atheism, radicalism and non-Trinitarianforms of Dissent.3

In the years before the French Revolution, not all RationalDissenters were prepared to endorse the radicalism of theInterregnum. Intent on gaining support for their campaign againstthe Test Acts, they sought to establish the respectability of theircause by dissociating it from the politics of the Commonwealth andthe religion of the Independents, which they believed lackedrationality. Instead, their efforts to define their political positionhistorically tended to focus on the far less controversial GloriousRevolution. In his Lectures on History, published in 1788, JosephPriestley described the Interregnum as a period of "absolute anarchyand confusion," observing that the "enthusiasm" of the Indepen-dents was an "enemy to all power." Rather than tracing England'spolitical prosperity to the Commonwealth, he attributed it in good

2 For the development of Rational Dissent, see: C. Gordon Bolam, Jeremy Goring, H. L.Short and Roger Thomas, The English Presbyterians: From Elizabethan Puritanism to ModernUnitarianism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 113-235. Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters: Fromthe Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 464-490.

3 For the politics of the Rational Dissenters, see: Richard W. Davis, Dissent in Politics,1780-1830: The Political Life of William Smith, M.P. (London: Epworth Press, 1971), 22-27,44-52, 62-76, 92—104. Isaac Kramnick, "Religion and Radicalism: English Political Theoryin the Age of Revolution," Political Theory, 5 (1977): 505-534. Anthony Lincoln, SomePolitical and Social Ideas of English Dissent 1763-1800 (New York: Octagon Books, 1971), 4-65.J. E. Cookson, The Friends of Peace: Anti-war Liberalism in England, 1793-1815 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1982).

96 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Whig fashion to the Revolution of 1688 which finally put an endto the struggle between king and Parliament.4 Andrew Kippis,preaching in 1788 on the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution,similarly praised William for delivering England from the twin evilsof Popery and absolutism. Whereas the Revolution, "one of themost illustrious and happy events recorded in history," had usheredin "the most delightful period" in the nation's past, the Common-wealth had achieved nothing that was "solid, effectual, andlasting."5 Addressing the charge that the violence of the Puritanstoward the Established Church demonstrated the danger ofempowering contemporary Dissent, the historian William Belshamexonerated the moderate Presbyterians by pinning the blame forthe excesses of the Commonwealth on the Independents underCromwell: "This was the man," he wrote, "who, at the head of anarmy of Enthusiasts and Fanatics, passionately devoted to theirleader, effected the subversion of the Constitution."6

By the 1820s, however, the Interregnum began to attract anumber of historians. The French Revolution had excited radicalactivity in England and hardened the oppositional tendenciesamong Dissenters as the government repression in the 1790s fellhardest on them. When Burke in his Reflections captured theRevolution of 1688 for the Establishment, asserting its essentialconservatism and denying its suitability as a precedent for reform,Dissenters turned to the Commonwealth, though the severity of therepression and the unpopularity of radical causes ensured that nomajor scholarly appreciation of England's republican past wouldbe likely to appear. With the end of the wars against France andthe revival of the reform movement, however, interest in theCommonwealth awakened. The years after Waterloo saw arenewed curiosity about Oliver Cromwell - a reflection, perhaps, ofEngland's need for a national hero to equal Bonaparte7 - and in

4 Joseph Priestley, Lectures on History, and General Policy; to which is Prefixed, An Essay on a Courseof Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life (Birmingham: J.Johnson, 1788), 262, 263,446.

5 Andrew Kippis, A Sermon Preached at the Oldfewry, on the Fourth of November, iy88, before theSociety for Commemorating the Glorious Revolution (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788),4-10, 26, 31, 32-39.

6 William Belsham, "Observations on the Test Laws," Essays, Philosophical, Historical, andLiterary (London: C. Dilly, 1789-1791), 2: 568-574.

7 Oliver Cromwell, Memoirs of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, and of His Sons, Richard and Henry,second edition (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821). ThomasCromwell, Oliver Cromwell and His Times, second edition (London: Sherwood, Neely and

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 97

1822, George Brodie, a radical Whig about whom we know little,published a History of the British Empire which was noteworthy for itsrefutation of Hume's defense of the Stuarts and its well-intentionedappreciation of the Commonwealth and Protectorate.8

The most extensive defense of the republic to appear at this time,however, was William Godwin's History of the Commonwealth, pub-lished between 1824 a n d 1828. Born into a family of Independentsand educated in the Dissenting academies, Godwin remainedattached to the Rational Dissenting tradition of Richard Price andJoseph Priestley long after he had become a nonbeliever.9 Theconviction, so essential to Dissent, that the free exercise of one'sprivate judgment was both a right and a duty informed his ownthinking about religion and politics. An advocate of intellectualfreedom, Godwin abhorred religious tests and favored thoserepublican forms of government which encouraged people to act asindependent, rational agents. His political "creed," he explained in1819, was simple: "I am in principle a Republican, but in practice aWhig."10 His speculations were progressive. He was known asa friend to the French Revolution and the appearance in 1793 of hisPolitical Justice made him for a time one of the principal theorists ofEnglish radicalism. But in practice he was more cautious. Heopposed revolutionary change for England, advocating insteadgradual improvement through the free exchange of ideas. HisHistory of the Commonwealth, with its defense of the republican ideal,was a significant contribution toward this end. Assessing theprospects for England in the early nineteenth century, however,Godwin was not overly optimistic. The nation was not yet ready forrepublican government and consequently all that a "liberal-mindedand enlightened man" could do, he told a correspondent in 1820, wasto support the Whigs in their efforts to achieve moderate reform.11

Jones, 1822). [Robert Southey], "Life of Cromwell," Quarterly Review, 25 (July, 1821):273-347-

8 George Brodie, A History of the British Empire from the Accession of Charles I to the Restoration(Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute, 1822).

9 For Godwin's debt to Rational Dissent, see: M. Fitzpatrick, "William Godwin and theRational Dissenters," Price-Priestley Newsletter, 3 (1979): 4-28. William Stafford,"Dissenting Religion Translated into Politics: Godwin's Political fustice" History ofPolitical Thought, 1 (1980): 279-299. Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1984). Mark Philp, Godwin's Political fustice (London: Duckworth, 1986).

10 Godwin to Lady Caroline Lamb (25 February 1819), C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin:Friends and Contemporaries (London: Henry S. King and Co., 1876), 2: 266.

11 Godwin to H. B. Rosser (7 and 27 March 1820), ibid., 2: 263, 265.

98 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

The purpose behind Godwin's history was to rehabilitate hiscountry's republican tradition by writing an account of theCommonwealth which would judge the period fairly — something hefelt had never adequately been done before, though he thankedhis "friend" George Brodie for "many valuable hints."12 Godwinreadily admitted that the republic had failed in England, and infact, like Millar and Brodie, he believed that it could hardly havedone otherwise. The nation was not prepared for a republicangovernment in the mid-seventeenth century and perhaps, hereflected, it never would be. And yet, the Commonwealth's failureby itself hardly constituted sufficient grounds for dismissing theexperiment altogether: there may be "men," he noted, "worthy ofour admiration, whose cause has not prospered." Godwin's historyalso set out to vindicate England's Dissenting tradition. For asGodwin understood it, republicanism was the political expression ofseventeenth-century Independency and by demonstrating what wasadmirable and constructive in one tradition, his book showed whatwas laudable in the other.13 As England in the 1820s debated themerits of admitting Dissenters to full political equality andreforming Parliament, a work of history such as Godwin's, whichstressed the legitimacy of England's Puritan and republican past,took on political significance.

In his treatment of the Long Parliament, Godwin challengeddirectly Hume's complaint that the Commons' preoccupation withthe forms of religious worship corrupted their cause by tainting itwith fanaticism. The leaders of this Parliament, Godwin pointedout, were striving to establish a republic in England and to doso successfully required reshaping the moral character of thenation, transforming values of subservience into those of inde-pendence. Religion was necessary for morality, and withoutmorality there could be "no real liberty, and no good politicalgovernment."14 This concern with changing the moral climate ofthe age lay behind the Puritans' preoccupation with the detailsof religious life. In his discussion of their desire to ban stageplays, Godwin made clear his conception of Puritanism as a moralforce:

12 William Godwin, History of the Commonwealth of England, from its Commencement, to theRestoration of Charles the Second (London: Henry Colburn, 1824-1828), 1: v-vii, x-xi.

13 Ibid., 1: 1-6. 14 Ibid., 1: 41-42,46.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 99

It was their aim [he wrote] to new mould the character of the people ofEngland. The nation had hitherto subsisted under a king; they weredesirous to change the government into a republic. Nothing can be moreunlike than the different frames of public mind demanded under thesetwo forms of government... The republicans in the Long Parliament werecalled upon to endeavour to substitute, for the manners of a court . . . , asevere, a manly, and an independent mode of feeling.

To encourage this reform of the English character, it was necessaryto prohibit the staging of plays written with the approbation ofkings and permeated with the "doctrines of non-resistance andpassive obedience."15 It was equally necessary for the Puritans toeliminate from religious worship any symbol or practice, such as thealtar and vestments, consecrated candles and incense, whichseemed associated with the principles of monarchy, and to sub-stitute in their place new ones aimed at instilling the values ofindependence which they so cherished. "Great changes," Godwinnoted, "cannot take place in the minds of generations of men, with-out a corresponding change in their external symbols." The leadersof the Long Parliament wished to bring about such a change, "theydesigned to introduce a more simple and a severer tone of religiousprofession, and a more manly spirit in the ordinary conduct of life."They may have failed in the end, but still, he wrote in answer toHume, "we ought . . . to do justice to the steadiness and sagacitywith which their intentions were prosecuted."16

Godwin's partiality for the Independents became most apparentin his account of the conflicts that arose within the Puritan move-ment during the course of the Civil War. The Independents, heargued, were the ones who fought against the monarchy of Charlesand the Church of Laud in order to achieve for England a greaterdegree of political and religious liberty. Where the Presbyterians,by the end of the Civil War, sought a mixed monarchy with restric-tions on the power of the king, the Independents desired a republic;and where the Presbyterians and Episcopalians insisted on a rigidconformity to their respective conceptions of the Church, theIndependents desired a broad, "generous spirit of toleration,"demanding for themselves "no other liberty . . . than [they were]willing to yield to all others."17 Like most Dissenters, Godwinvalued immensely religious toleration and freedom of thought, and

15 Ibid., 1: 77, 78, 79. 16 Ibid., i: 85. 17 Ibid., 1: 335-337, 344, 354~357-

ioo The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

his history demonstrated the debt that England owed to theIndependents for the growth of these liberties. They were the firstto understand the benefits of toleration and intellectual freedom.Had the Presbyterians been victorious, Godwin asserted, theywould have established an intolerant and persecuting Church. IfBritain in the early nineteenth century enjoyed a large sphere ofliberty, then it was due in large part to the efforts of the Indepen-dents. If reformers were now striving to widen this sphere, thenthey were furthering the process that the Independents had begunmore than a century and a half earlier.

In his history, Godwin suggested the advantages that a republicwould bring to the nation. More than any other form of govern-ment, it would enable its members to achieve their highestpotential. Under a republic, people became autonomous andrational agents, thinking for themselves and acting as they thoughtbest. Man, Godwin believed, would never be all that he could "solong as he is not penetrated with the sentiment of independence, solong as he looks up with a self-denying and a humble spirit to anyother creature of the same figure and dimensions as himself."18

Where a monarchy rewarded submission, a republic, with itsemphasis on political and intellectual liberty, encouraged thisvery independence. The citizens of a republic acknowledged nosuperiors other than those whose talents were objectively greater.Rank and prestige were based not on patronage, but on merit alone.Under a republic, Godwin remarked, "every citizen should knowhimself the equal of every other citizen, and feel convinced that thehighest elevation in the state, was open to every one, whose virtuesand talents might qualify him to fill it."19 Although independent,the virtuous citizen renounced personal ambition, if he felt it at all,in order to serve the commonwealth, whether in Parliament, thearmy or any other capacity. Opposed to ambition, republican virtueconsisted in the willingness to sacrifice personal gain for the publicgood.20 The soldiers of the republican army, Godwin observed,"were not ordinary individuals. They were citizens, who had lefttheir usual occupations . . . to fight for liberty. They exercised theirunderstandings; each man was a thinking and reflecting being; theyvalued their independence."21 In all of these remarks, Godwin's

18 Ibid., 4: 18. 19 Ibid., 4: 259.20 Ibid., 2: 496-497, 499, 3: 488. 21 Ibid., 2: 294.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 101rhetoric lay solidly within the tradition of English republicanismthat stretched back to the Commonwealth itself.

If liberty was the ideal of the Independents, it was imperfectlyput into practice. The statesmen of the Commonwealth, Godwinacknowledged, actually limited freedom of expression, substitutedhigh courts of justice for trials by jury in cases of political import,and - here was the most serious charge against them - steadfastlyrefused to make the Commonwealth truly republican by dismissingthe Rump Parliament and convening a popular assembly elected bythe nation as a whole. Under the Commonwealth, political powerremained in the hands of the few. In defense of the Independents,Godwin pointed out that their regime was opposed by the majorityof Englishmen. The goal of the Commonwealthmen was to conferon England the benefits of a republic, but no matter how noble theirvision, it was not shared by the multitude. Had they surrenderedtheir power to a representative assembly in which their enemieswould have predominated, then everything they had accomplishedwould have been undone. Not until the nation had come toaccept the republic on the strength of its virtues could the leadersof the Commonwealth relinquish their exclusive hold on thestate.22

According to Godwin, no one understood better than Cromwellhow precarious the republic actually was. Mixing personal ambitionwith sound reasoning, Cromwell recognized that given theconservative bent of most of his countrymen, England wouldremain politically unstable until the nation's traditional consti-tution of king, Lords and Commons was in some measure restored.To make himself king, Cromwell used the army to disperse therepublic.23 A love of power, Godwin lamented, was his greatweakness and the cause of his apostasy. As a citizen of a republic,Cromwell was flawed. Where other leaders of the Commonwealthsuch as Hampden or Vane were truly virtuous, acting with dis-interest and always ready to sacrifice personal gain for the good ofthe community, Cromwell adulterated virtue with its opposite.24

For the ambition of one man, the Commonwealth was sacrificed, itsideals violated and the ground made ready for what was now almost

22 Ibid., 2: 500-504, 547-55°> 3 : 108-123, 187-193, 298-300, 341-348, 467-471.23 Ibid., 3: 301-304, 434-438.2 4 Ibid., 1: 101-102, 121-122, 2: 200-202, 3: 218-219.

102 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

inevitable - the restoration of the Stuarts. Here was Cromwell'sone lasting accomplishment: "He deprived the whole nation,"Godwin wrote, " . . . of the desire and the hope to achieve greatthings. He taught his countrymen to be incredulous to the name ofpublic liberty. He prepared the way for all the profligacy, theinhumanity, the persecutions, and the infamy of the reign ofCharles the Second."25 In truth, Godwin argued, Cromwell's reignconferred few benefits on England. He was a statesman of immensecapabilities, his intentions may have been laudable in part - firstto become king, but then to grant the nation "a free and a fullparliament, the equal and genuine representative of the people ofEngland"26 - but in the end he was defeated by the same obstacle aswere the Commonwealthmen. His usurpation was unpopular andto maintain power in the face of such opposition he was forced toresort to violent means. After dismissing the Long Parliament, hisgovernment became notoriously arbitrary.27

And yet Godwin saw more in Cromwell than a self-servingusurper who trampled on the virtuous republic solely to promote hisown ambition. He was an Independent, sincere in his religiousbeliefs, concerned with improving the moral character of thenation. Because of these "qualities," Godwin noted, " . . . we shouldbe almost disposed to place him in the number of the few excellentprinces that have swayed a sceptre, were it not for the gross andunauthorised manner in which he climbed to this eminence."28 Asthis observation suggests, there was an ambivalence in Godwin'sappraisal of Cromwell that, perhaps, can be explained by his ownloyalties. As a republican, Godwin could not countenance the factthat Cromwell's usurpation had put an end to the republic anddestroyed the benefits which in time that government might havegiven to England. But as a Dissenter, Godwin was equally drawn toCromwell as the greatest historical figure whom the Dissenters hadever produced. That Cromwell had his faults and committed hiscrimes, Godwin's narrative made abundantly clear; but he was alsoa better ruler than any of the Stuarts, either before or after him.29

A Dissenting king, Godwin's history seemed to say, could do as well,if not better for England than one who conformed. Godwin endedhis book with the speculation that given ten more years, Cromwell's

25 Ibid., 3: 304, 472-473. 26 Ibid., 3: 435.27 Ibid., 4: 58O-586, 597-6O5. 28 foi^ 4 . 587-596. 29 Ibid., 4: 409.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 103

administration would have become increasingly popular, morelegal and less arbitrary.30

By defending what many claimed were the origins of the reformmovement, Godwin's History of the Commonwealth represented animportant contribution to the political debate of the 1820s and early1830s. Where Establishment polemicists had denied the Dissentersand republicans a constructive role in the nation's past, claimingthat they had always existed outside England's fundamentalinstitutions in Church and state, Godwin demonstrated to thecontrary the legitimacy of the Dissenting and republican heritageby showing what was admirable in the aspirations not only of theCommonwealthmen, but of Cromwell as well. In some respectsGodwin's rhetorical strategy resembled that which Macaulay woulduse in his essay on Milton, shifting the focus of the historicaldebate from the Glorious Revolution to the Civil War in order toencourage a more vigorous approach to popular reform. ButGodwin went much further than Macaulay, for the republicanismthat animated Godwin's history was alien to the young Whig. TheCommonwealth which Godwin vindicated, Macaulay dismissed as a"Venetian oligarchy," and Cromwell's usurpation, which Godwinviewed with distress, Macaulay regarded as a necessary restorationof order.31 Indicating its pertinence to contemporary debate,reviewers judged the book along predictable party lines. While theDissenting Eclectic and radical Westminster reviews welcomedGodwin's book, the Tory and High Church British Critic found it "ajejune, commonplace narrative . . . , embodying all the errors,prejudices, and intemperance . . . of the revolutionary school."32

Even after the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and thepassing of Parliamentary reform, the history of the Interregnumcontinued to figure in contemporary debate as middle-class andDissenting radicals pressed for an extension of the gains made in1828 and 1832. The early historical works of John Forster attest tothe enduring importance of the Puritan past for Dissent in thedecade after the Reform Act. Between 1836 and 1839, Forster

30 Ibid., 4: 341-343, 605-608.31 [Thomas Babington Macaulay], "Milton," Edinburgh Review, 42 (August, 1825): 335.32 "Godwin's History of the Commonwealth of England" Eclectic Review, 22, n e w ser ies

( S e p t e m b e r , 1824): 193-205. "Godwin's History of the Commonwealth of Englandr," WestminsterReview, 8 ( O c t o b e r , 1827): 328—351. "Godwin's History of the Commonwealth of England," BritishCritic, 3, third series (October, 1826): 77.

104 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

published biographies of Eliot and Strafford, Pym and Hampden,Vane and Marten, and Cromwell. Commissioned originally byDionysius Lardner for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia and republishedin 1840 as Forster's Statesmen of the Commonwealth, these studies rep-resented the most significant attempt to reevaluate the successesand failures of the Commonwealth and its leaders since Godwin'shistory, written a decade earlier. Raised a Unitarian, Forster, likeGodwin, was rooted intellectually in Rational Dissent. He attendedCambridge briefly, but then chose to study law in London, perhapsbecause as a Dissenter he was barred from taking a degree at theuniversity. By 1832, he had started to move in London's literarycircles, developing the ties that would provide the basis for his ownliterary career. He was on good terms with Leigh Hunt, CharlesLamb, Edward Bulwer and the actor William Macready. RobertBrowning helped him write his biography of Strafford, and later hecultivated friendships with Charles Dickens, Walter Savage Landorand Thomas Carlyle. As a man of letters, Forster's achievementswere diverse: he was a historian of Stuart England, a biographerof Swift, Defoe and Goldsmith, the author of the official lives ofLandor and Dickens. A respected literary and drama critic, he alsoedited at one time or another the Examiner, Edward Moxon's short-lived Reflector, and the Foreign Quarterly Review .33

Forster belonged to the tradition of liberal politics and rationalreligion that stretched back to Richard Price and Joseph Priestley.He remained a practicing Unitarian into the 1840s, if not longer,attending services at the chapel of the Benthamite and Unitarianminister W. J. Fox.34 When in 1833 Forster became drama critic forthe Examiner, that radical periodical was backing wholeheartedlythe demands of the Dissenters, going so far as to advocate theseparation of Church and state. Also indicative of Forster's politicalposition was one of his first ventures into journalism - a series ofarticles on "Our Early Patriots" which he contributed in 1831 to theEnglishman's Magazine, a radical monthly calling for Parliamentaryreform, the abolition of slavery, freedom of conscience, free tradeand the general improvement of social conditions. In these essayson Pym, Eliot and Vane, which anticipated in many ways his later

33 James A. Davies, John Forster: A Literary Life (Leicester: Leicester University Press,1983).

34 Ibid., 75, 91.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 105

Statesmen of the Commonwealth, Forster portrayed Parliament'scontest with the Stuarts as a popular and patriotic struggle torestore the constitution to its "original free principles." Publishedafter the Whigs had introduced their first Reform Bill in March,1831, Forster conceived of these biographical studies as con-tributions to the reform effort, pointing out the similaritiesbetween the crisis of the mid-seventeenth century and that of hisown age. In both cases, he argued, the issue at stake was the same- the survival of Parliamentary government. The reformers of the1830s were thus continuing a process initiated almost two centuriesearlier by that "sacred band of patriots," of whom Eliot, Pym andVane were the most illustrious representatives.35 For a youngJohn Forster who was embarking on a literary career in London,Unitarian Dissent, liberal politics and engaged journalism werethree of his central concerns.

The Statesmen of the Commonwealth was Forster's first major book,written when he was still in his mid-twenties and informed by thesame liberal sentiments as his earlier articles for the Englishman'sMagazine. As S. R. Gardiner remarked, Forster was "the last of thosewriters who carried into historical investigation the spirit whichanimated the Reformers who rose to power upon the ruins of theTory party in 1830, and who dealt with Tory principles in history asLord John Russell dealt with them in politics."36 When Forsterrepublished his Statesmen in 1840, he prefaced it with a "Treatise onthe Popular Progress in English History" that chronicled thegrowing political importance of the "people" from the granting ofMagna Carta through the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a processwhich entailed creating a limited monarchy, developing the rightsand privileges of Parliament and increasing the importance ofpopular liberties and representation. Forster clearly considered this"popular progress" to be the fundamental dynamic in Englishhistory and by emphasizing its centrality to the past, his Statesmenprovided in effect a historical justification for the reform movement

35 For t h e pol i t ical v i e w s o f the Englishman's Magazine, s e e "Our Princ ip les ," and "TheC o u n t r y a n d Its Prospec t s ," Englishman's Magazine, i (April , 1831): 1-4, 4 - 8 . For Forster'scontributions, see "Our Early Patriots," "John Pym," "Sir John Eliot," Englishman'sMagazine, 1 (April—August, 1831): 351—356, 499—512, 623-637, and "Sir Henry Vane'sScheme of Parl iamentary Reform," Englishman's Magazine, 2 (September, 1831): 1-13. Forthe attribution of these articles, see T)a.vies,John Forster, 10.

36 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "Mr. John Forster: Obituary," Academy, 9 (5 February 1876):

106 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

of the early nineteenth century-what Magna Carta had begun, thereformers of the 1830s had come near to completing.37

In his Statesmen, Forster portrayed his subjects as the leaders of agreat "patriotic" cause, aimed at securing for England a more"popular" form of government, and culminating in the founding ofthe Commonwealth. Like Godwin, on whose history he drewconsiderably, Forster believed that the Commonwealthmen hadnever received the recognition they deserved, and he conceived ofhis Statesmen in part as an attempt to remedy this situation. Theleaders of the Commonwealth, he proclaimed confidently, quotingWarburton, the eighteenth-century Bishop of Gloucester, were the"GREATEST GENIUSES FOR GOVERNMENT THE WORLD EVER SAW."38

Above all, they were moderates who had rejected monarchy andbecome republicans only as a last resort. Here was a crucialdistinction between Godwin's radical interpretation and Forster'smore conservative view: where Godwin had presented theCommonwealthmen as thoroughgoing republicans and had usedhis history to vindicate the republican ideal, Forster saw theirrepublicanism as incidental, as no more than a means to a moremoderately liberal end. What they wanted, he maintained, "waspopular and good government, embracing extensive represen-tation, security for person and property, freedom of thought,freedom of the press, and entire liberty of conscience. It was onlybecause they could not find these under a monarchy that theybecame republicans; but under a monarchy they would have beenhappy with these."39 For the most part, Forster considered theCommonwealth to have been a success. The most serious chargeagainst its leaders was that they had refused to dissolve the LongParliament and place the republic on a truly popular base. But asForster pointed out, they were moving steadily in this direction atthe very moment when Cromwell and the army turned them out.40

As it emerged from Forster's account, the Commonwealth was thefirst significant attempt to achieve popular reform in England andalthough Cromwell undid its immediate accomplishments, it set aprecedent which would not be forgotten.

37 J o h n F o r s t e r , The Statesmen of the Commonwealth of England; with a Treatise on the PopularProgress in English History, ed. J . O . C h o u l e s ( N e w York: Harper and Brothers , 1846),vii—xxviii.

38 Ibid., 532. 39 Ibid., 491. 40 Ibid., 515.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 107Although his interpretation of the seventeenth century concen-

trated largely on secular issues, Forster was not oblivious to theimportance of religion. Aware that religious motives played animportant part in the lives of his subjects, he was most concernedwith freeing them from the accusation of fanaticism. He generallyavoided the term "Puritan," which carried connotations ofirresponsible enthusiasm, preferring instead to describe hisstatesmen when appropriate as "Nonconformists." Forster'sapproach to religion came out most clearly in his biography of theyounger Vane, where he argued that Vane's Puritanism was aboveridicule. He admitted that Vane was zealous, but added that hiszeal was restrained by "knowledge" and "charity." Vane's visionaryfanaticism was in truth nothing less than a clear-headed far-sightedness. "He was called a fanatic," Forster explained, "becausehe was the most strenuous advocate that religious liberty everpossessed. He was called a wild, unintelligible visionary, becausethrough life he never ceased to urge, with all the strengthof his passions and the subtlety of his intellect, a UNIVERSALTOLERATION of sects and opinions." Toleration became the essenceof Puritanism at its best, and Vane became the progenitor of a lineof tolerant thinking that stretched through Milton and Locke toCharles James Fox and Lord Holland.41

Henry Vane was the hero of Forster's Statesmen. He was theculmination of that movement for popular reform that originatedwith Eliot, Hampden and Pym, and he best represented the valuesof the Commonwealth. "He sought to achieve for the Englishpeople,^ us, his posterity, the blessings of a government responsibleto the governed, the basis of which was to be security for person andproperty, and perfect and uncontrollable freedom in all mattersappertaining to the conscience and intellect. Failing of this objectin that day under a monarchical form, he struck for a republic."42

And in Oliver Cromwell, Forster found Vane's nemesis. WhereVane was sincere in his faith, Cromwell often acted the hypocrite,using religion to promote his own ends. Where Vane struggledselflessly for the good of the people, Cromwell desired above all torealize his own ambition. And where Vane was a politician of"genius" and "virtue," Cromwell was a flawed character, sufferingfrom a "WANT OF TRUTH."43 During most of the decisive crises

41 Ibid., 274, 277. 42 Ibid., 302. Forster's italics. 43 Ibid., 266-267, 315, 454.

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in the history of the Commonwealth, Vane and Cromwell stood asopposites. Vane disapproved of Pride's Purge because he consideredit an act of illegal violence, and he objected to the king's executionon the grounds that it was impolitic. Cromwell, meanwhile, was aforce behind both events, seeing them as preliminary steps in hisown quest for power. At the very moment when Cromwell and thearmy turned against the Commonwealth, Vane was in the processof designing a scheme of electoral reform that anticipated in manyways the Reform Act of 1832 and that would have made theCommonwealth a truly popular republic.44 Assessing the immedi-ate effects of Cromwell's usurpation, Forster echoed the judgmentof William Godwin: "Whatever . . . had been thought sacred,[Cromwell] made profane." The Commonwealth, and everything itstood for, had been tried and "found wanting." The cause of liberalreform had come to an end.45

11

From the American Revolution through the passing of the ReformAct, Rational Dissent provided much of the impetus behind middle-class radicalism. In their attempt to discover a usable past,Dissenters like Godwin and Forster focused on the Interregnum,and in particular on the Commonwealth, a period they thoughtexemplified the Independent's belief in free religious inquiry andthe republican's ideal of political liberty. But with the spreadof evangelical Dissent in the early nineteenth century, leadership ofthe Dissenting cause passed from the heirs of Price and Priestley tothose denominations that had felt the impact of evangelicalism.Though politically more conservative than the Rational Dissenters,the Congregationalists and Baptists were no less strident in theircampaign against the Anglican Establishment. An importantspokesman for evangelical Nonconformity, and one who used thepast in order to define a role for Dissent in the present, was RobertVaughan, a Congregationalist minister, professor of modernhistory at the London University and editor of the British QuarterlyReview. A prolific historian, Vaughan published in the 1830s and1840s two studies of Wycliffe and his age, three works on the seven-teenth century as well as numerous other articles, pamphlets,

44 Ibid., 305-306, 309-310, 314-317, 443, 476-477- 45 It>ia., 522.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 109

addresses and books on a wide range of theological, political andhistorical subjects.46

Like most Dissenters, Vaughan was a liberal in politics. Hebelieved in progress and welcomed the emergence of moderncommercial society, the "age of great cities," which he found vastlysuperior to the feudal order that had preceded it. Where feudalismhad been characterized by military aristocracies and establishedchurches, commercial society was noted for its free and peacefuleconomic activity, civil and religious liberty, representative govern-ment and democratic churches. Because of its popular tendenciesand its emphasis on the individual's right to private judgment,Vaughan considered Congregationalism, and Dissent in general,conducive to progress and wholly compatible with modernity.47

He lamented the intolerance that the Anglican Establishmentcontinued to display toward Dissenters, and looked forward to atime when religious discrimination would cease and all Christiandenominations would coexist peacefully. In daily politics, Vaughanfor the most part supported the Whigs. He applauded the effortsthey had made toward Catholic emancipation, Parliamentaryreform and the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Heapproved of the abolition of slavery and the Municipal CorporationAct of 1835. An advocate of free trade, he considered it the onlyremedy for the economic distress that plagued England in the 1840sand the only way to ensure harmony between nations. And yet hissupport for the Whigs was not without reservations. He consideredthem conservatives, strongly attached to the nation's traditionalinstitutions and in particular to the Anglican Church, who werethus unwilling to meet all the Dissenters' demands. "Even inthe case of Lord John Russell," Vaughan observed in 1845, "theecclesiastical is placed before the civil, and the sympathies of hisLordship with an established priesthood, are manifestly strongerthan his sympathies with general freedom. Civil liberty is good, butthe civil establishment of religion is a greater good."48

46 Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. "Vaughan , Robert (1795-1868)."47 Robert V a u g h a n , Congregationalism: Or, the Polity of Independent Churches, Viewed in Relation to

the State and Tendencies of Modern Society, s econd ed i t ion (London: J a c k s o n and Walford,1842), 5-37, and The Age of Great Cities: Or, Modern Society Viewed in Its Relation to Intelligence,Morals, and Religion (London: Jackson and Walford, 1843).

48 Robert Vaughan , "Lord J o h n Russell ," Essays on History, Philosophy, and Theology (London:Jackson and Walford, 1849), 1: 59 -62 , 79.

110 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

As a Congregationalist, Vaughan believed that every body ofChristians had the right to worship, admit members, imposediscipline, choose officers and manage its affairs independent ofany authority but that of God. Accordingly, he found the idea of astate-endowed religious establishment untenable. Not only was thealliance of Church and state contrary to Scripture, which endorsedthe voluntary principle, but it also tended to corrupt Christianitysince the civil magistrate as a rule was not competent to decidereligious questions and since the Church, backed by the power ofthe state, had a tendency to persecute those who dissented from it.But in the current contest between Church and chapel, Vaughantook a more moderate position. He recognized the legitimategrounds on which the Church of England stood: its version ofChristianity may not have been the purest, but it enjoyed thesupport of a majority of English men and women, its history wasintimately connected with the progress of the English nation, and itwas integral to many national institutions. Acknowledging, then,that England was religiously plural and that a case could be madefor the Establishment and Dissent, he called on both Church andchapel to accommodate one another. Dissenters, he urged, shouldrefrain from demanding immediate disestablishment andshould concentrate instead on building up the strength of their owndenominations, while Churchmen - and here he was most emphatic- should moderate their pretensions, accept the legitimacy ofDissent and grant it a complete toleration.49

With his first study of the seventeenth century, Vaughan set outto establish the legitimacy of Dissent by an appeal to its past. HisMemorials of the Stuart Dynasty, published in 1831, offered a distinctlyNonconformist interpretation of its subject. It emphasized thecentrality of religious controversy to the contest between king andParliament and stressed the contribution that the "puritans andtheir descendants" had made to the progress of political andreligious liberty in England.50 His Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, anedition of the Pell papers published in 1838, and his England under

49 Robert V a u g h a n , Thoughts on the Past and Present State of Religious Parties in England (London:Jackson and Walford, 1838), xvi-xviii, 7-8, Congregationalism, 1-4, 92-116, 126-146, 171-174,"Church and State," Essays, 2: 176—221.

50 Robert V a u g h a n , Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, Including the Constitutional and EcclesiasticalHistory of England, from the Decease of Elizabeth to the Abdication of James II (London:Holdsworth and Ball, 1831), 1: iii-iv.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 111the House of Stuart, which appeared in 1840 under the auspices ofthe Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, developed theinterpretation further.

Puritanism for Vaughan began as a movement within theElizabethan Church, involving those loyal but extreme Protestantswho wanted to rid the established faith of certain practices whichthey considered relics of Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately, theChurch at this time was intent on uniformity and unwilling tocountenance dissent. It persecuted the Puritan clergy, deprivedthem of their livings and transformed them into a formidableopposition. The alliance between Church and state, an undesirableif unavoidable consequence of the English Reformation, ensuredthat what began as a purely religious movement soon becamepolitical. Churchman and king supported one another and turnedagainst their mutual antagonist. Laud preached the doctrines ofdivine right and passive obedience while Charles in returnsupported Laud's Arminian theology and Roman ritual.51 ForVaughan, it was the Puritans in Parliament who opposed thearbitrary measures of the court, and he made plain the debt thatEngland owed them for the preservation of its liberties. "It is theconfession of their enemies," he wrote,that to this people we "owe the whole freedom of our constitution" . . . Theprinciples which made them Protestants made them Puritans, teachingthem to regard oppression as an evil to be resisted, whether practiced bypopes, by princes, or by a Protestant clergy. Animated by these principles,and persecuted by the crown and the court clergy, the Puritans not onlybecame connected with every popular movement, but gave to every suchmovement the peculiar energy of religious motives. The interests ofreligion and of civil freedom were seen to be every where interwoven, sothat to forsake either would be to give an ascendancy to the enemies ofboth.**

Vaughan's account of this contest emphasized the excellence of thePuritan clergy, their popularity, loyalty and willingness tocompromise. They remained Calvinists, the preference of thenation, at a time when the court was Arminian, and they stayed

51 Ibid., 1: 39-43, 5!-6o> no-112, 129-148, 275-296, 331-336, 346-347, 425-444, 469-476,481—508. Robert Vaughan, The History of England under the House of Stuart, Including theCommonwealth (London : Ba ldwin a n d C r a d o c k , 1840), 1: 26, 33-46 , 109-131, 243-246,268-271, 273-288.

52 Vaughan, England under the House of Stuart, 1: 45.

ii2 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

within the Church until the intolerance of the court madeaccommodation impossible.53

As a Dissenter, Vaughan was particularly concerned with theproblem of religious liberty, and as a historian of Stuart England,he was painfully aware that creating a tolerant society was one areawhere Anglican Churchmen and a good many Puritans had failed.Vaughan readily acknowledged that many of the early Puritanswere just as committed to the principle of religious uniformity asthe Churchmen. Their initial disagreement with the Church wasnot over toleration but over which practices the Establishmentshould enforce, and the Puritans were outspoken in their hatredof the Roman Catholics, often upbraiding the court for its laxenforcement of the penal laws.54 But among one group of Puritans,the Independents, ideas of toleration did emerge. Believing that allchurches were voluntary associations, organized solely for thepurposes of religion, the Independents called for the separation ofreligion and politics. Here for Vaughan was the origin of all modernideas of toleration. The very idea of religious uniformity heconsidered incompatible with Protestantism, which was founded ontwo principles - the sufficiency of the Bible and the individual'sright to private judgment. When the Anglican Establishment orthe Puritans demanded uniformity, they were actually adopting thePapal practice of infallibility and denying the individual the right todecide on matters of faith by a personal appeal to Scripture. Whatmade religious diversity particularly troublesome in the seven-teenth century was the close alliance of Church and state which,confusing the spiritual and the temporal, equated dissent from theChurch with disloyalty to the state. The Independents pointedthe way out of this dilemma when they argued that the separationof Church and state would enable religious differences to coexistwith political loyalty. Their ideas first gained popularity among thesoldiers of the Parliamentary army, found a patron in OliverCromwell, and then, after the Restoration, provided the foundationfor modern Nonconformity.55

The political position that Vaughan took in his works of history

53 V a u g h a n , Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, i: 61-71 , 147-148, 336, 3 4 5 - 3 4 6 , England under theHouse of Stuart, 1: 35.

54 V a u g h a n , Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, 1: 4 1 - 4 3 , 6 5 - 6 6 .55 I b id . , 1: 3 9 - 4 2 , 297-304 , 327. V a u g h a n , England under the House of Stuart, 1: 124-131.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 113

was a moderate one, consistent with his Whig sympathies. Heapplauded the Long Parliament for its tendency to preserve ratherthan innovate, he remained relatively unimpressed with the radicalpolitics of the Commonwealth - he was no republican - and hesaved his praise for Cromwell. In his Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, asin his other seventeenth-century studies, he presented one of themost favorable portraits of the Puritan statesman to appear at thistime. He accepted the usual criticisms of his subject - Cromwell diddissemble in order to promote his own ambition - but Vaughanwent on to insist that there was more to Cromwell's behavior thanmere hypocrisy. Cromwell was above all a pragmatist, shapingevents for the public good, and this practical approach to politicsexplained many of his apparent inconsistencies. After the CivilWar, three hostile parties contended for supremacy and the victoryof any one of them would have ended in tyranny. The royalistswould have restored the Stuarts, the Presbyterians planned toimpose a religious settlement as intolerant as Laud's, and therepublicans subjected the nation to an oligarchy. Cromwell at firstattempted to arrange a compromise between these parties andwhen this policy failed, he sided with the army, consenting to theking's execution in order to safeguard what the war had achieved.Realizing at last that only a mixed monarchy would restore stabil-ity while preserving freedom, Cromwell dismissed the RumpParliament and proceeded to reestablish as much of England'straditional constitution as circumstances would allow. LikeMacaulay, Vaughan was impressed with Cromwell's efforts tobalance liberty and order. Although he acknowledged that theProtectorate was far from perfect - to govern in the face of suchopposition was difficult and Cromwell was forced at times to resortto arbitrary measures - Vaughan stressed that Cromwell broughtgreatness to England. His rule was just and humane, and hegranted a large degree of religious toleration.56 Cromwell, Vaughanwrote, "secured to the country comparative order and tranquillity;encouraged learning, agriculture, and commerce; and so faraugmented her general resources and naval power, as to confer

56 Robert Vaughan, The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, and the State of Europe during the Early Partof the Reign of Louis XIV (London: Henry Colburn, 1839), 1: lxiii-xcviii, cxiv-cxx, Englandunder the House of Stuart, 2: 498-499, 500-505, 521-522, 533"536> 54!-542, 545~548> Memorialsof the Stuarts, 2: 202—204, 238-239, 244-245, 254-255, 261-265.

114 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

upon England a name and influence in the affairs of Europe, whichshe had not attained under the sway of any sovereign in the longline of her princes."57

An unadulterated Protestantism, political liberalism, a commit-ment to toleration - here were the important characteristics ofPuritanism as it developed in the course of the seventeenth century.Given the centrality of the rivalry between Church and Dissent tothe politics of the early nineteenth century, Vaughan's interpret-ation of the Puritan past carried an ideological significance. Just asthe Puritans had defended England's Protestant faith against theRomanizing innovations of Archbishop Laud, so the evangelicalDissenters were preserving a vital Protestantism in the face ofthe "heartless formalism" of the Church and the Romanizingtendencies of the Tractarians. Evangelicalism, Vaughan onceremarked, was a "revival of the piety of the elder puritans, and ofthe still older protestant reformers."58 And just as the Puritans hadprotected England's traditional liberties against the tyranny of theStuarts and attempted to found a just, free and tolerant common-wealth under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, so contemporaryDissenters should continue to pursue similar liberal ends. Likeothers, Vaughan was often alarmed at the virulence of thesectarian strife that plagued England in the 1830s and 1840s, and inthe interest of national unity he called for moderation.59 Althoughhe addressed this plea to both Churchmen and Dissenters, hishistorical studies made it clear that more often than not theEstablishment, because of its unwillingness to compromise, wasresponsible for inciting this hostility between Christians. In theseventeenth century, Francis Bacon had suggested that harmonymight have been maintained so long as the Church demandedobedience to only the essentials of Christian doctrine, whileallowing the greatest diversity on the inessentials pertaining toworship and discipline. This had been the position of the moremoderate Puritans, and Vaughan speculated that much of thecentury's religious conflict might have been avoided if onlythe Establishment had accepted this liberal principle.60 Though it

57 V a u g h a n , Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, i: cii i .58 Vaughan, "Lord John Russell," Essays, i: 53, 57, "Oxford and Evangelical Churchmen,"

Essays, 1: 108-110.59 S e e , for e x a m p l e , V a u g h a n , Congregationalism, 105-116.60 V a u g h a n , England under the House of Stuart, 1: 119-120, Memorials of the Stuarts, 1: 71-72.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 115

referred to an earlier age, Vaughan's speculation was no lessgermane to his own troubled time.

The appearance in the late 1830s of Vaughan's Protectorate ofOliver Cromwell and Forster's Statesmen of the Commonwealth wasindicative of a changing emphasis in English thinking about theStuart past. Where earlier writers from Edmund Burke to HenryHallam had seen the Interregnum as largely destructive and hadlooked instead to the Glorious Revolution for the establishment ofthe nation's liberties, these Dissenting historians, building on thework of William Godwin, were now stressing the importance ofthe Puritan past, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, in theshaping of modern England. Defenders of the Establishment hadoften tried to discredit Dissent by associating it with seventeenth-century Puritanism. The Dissenters, they charged, had alwaysexisted in opposition to the nation's institutions, were prone toenthusiasm and when given the opportunity to influence affairs,had demonstrated their subversive tendencies by overturning themonarchy, Church and Lords. Historians like Forster and Vaughan,despite the differences in their interpretations, answered thisaccusation. They freed the Puritans from the charge of fanaticism,located the origin of toleration among the Independents, anddemonstrated that the leaders of the Parliament were politicalmoderates wholly acceptable to early Victorian liberalism. Whetherturning to Vane and the Commonwealth or Cromwell and theProtectorate they emphasized that Dissent and liberty - especiallyliberty of conscience - went hand in hand. Within this historicalcontext, the Dissenters' assault on the Anglican Establishmentceased to be an act of disloyalty, becoming instead a necessary stepin the pursuit of those liberties that had made England, in the pastand in the present, a great and unique nation.

This preoccupation with the Puritan past was part of a largereffort by Dissenters to justify their nonconformity. Absent fromtheir argument was any mention of the millenarianism of thePuritans. Though millenarian aspirations may have been commonin the first half of the seventeenth century, affecting almost allsegments of society, subsequent defenders of the Establishmenthad come to see the Puritans' conviction that they were God'sinstrument for creating His kingdom on earth as a definingcharacteristic of their fanaticism. Well before the nineteenthcentury, however, Dissenters had started to distance themselves

116 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

from this Puritan millenarianism, replacing it with a secularconception of progress in which Dissent became synonymous withthe attainment of civil and religious liberty.61 As Dissenters in the1820s and 1830s intensified their campaign against the Establish-ment, their interpretation of the Puritan past, in which theCommonwealth and Protectorate were seen as a liberal alternativeto the Stuart Church and monarchy, gave them a framework inwhich to understand who they were and what it was they weretrying to accomplish.

Cromwell's reputation provided the Dissenters with their mosttroublesome historiographical problem. For upholders of theEstablishment, Cromwell represented everything that was mostdestructive in Puritanism and, by association, in Dissent. Hisfanaticism and hypocrisy, ambition and disregard for traditionalinstitutions clearly required comment. And yet for Dissenters, thedefense of Cromwell was no easy task. While he was without a doubtthe greatest Dissenter English history had yet produced, he alsoseemed to have violated the very liberalism that the Dissentersclaimed to embrace. According to conventional wisdom, it wasCromwell, after all, who had turned against the republic anderected a military despotism on its ruins. A defense of Cromwellthus threatened to become an apology for tyranny, an admissionthat Puritanism and liberty were hardly compatible. Vaughan andForster confronted the complexities of Cromwell's career withdifferent interpretive strategies, neither of which was whollysatisfying. Unwilling to endorse the radicalism of the Common-wealth, Vaughan argued that Cromwell's practical achievements inthe cause of liberty and good government far surpassed thedeplorable effects of his hypocrisy and ambition. Though Macaulayin his early essays had used a similar approach with greatrhetorical success, it seemed an almost intentional misrepresen-tation of the more unpleasant aspects of Cromwell's rise to power.Forster, on the other hand, genuinely repelled by Cromwell'susurpation, abandoned the Protector to his detractors, andconcentrated instead on making Vane and the Commonwealthconform to the expectations of early Victorian liberalism. Not until

61 For the Dissenters' retreat from millenarianism in the years after the Restoration, seeRussell E. Richey, "The Origins of British Radicalism: The Changing Rationale forDissent," Eighteenth-Century Studies, 7 (1973-1974): 179-192.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 117

Carlyle shifted attention from Cromwell's politics to his religionwould Dissenters see a more attractive way out of their dilemma.

in

By far the most significant contribution to the early Victorianreappraisal of the Commonwealth and Protectorate was thepublication in 1845 °f Thomas Carlyle's edition of the Letters andSpeeches of Oliver Cromwell. Steeped in Scottish Calvinism andDissent, Carlyle felt an enduring fascination for the Puritan past.In 1838, he had agreed to write an article on Cromwell for JohnStuart Mill's London and Westminster Review but never completed itbecause Mill's assistant, John Robertson, broke the agreementand wrote the article himself. Unwilling to give up the projectaltogether, Carlyle decided to continue on his own and set to workon the book that emerged seven years later as the Letters andSpeeches.^2 The period of composition was difficult. At one time,Carlyle intended to produce a complete history of England from thedeath of Elizabeth through the Protectorate, but as the materialsproved intractable, he abandoned the project in 1843 andconcentrated on a biography of Cromwell instead. Some ofthe manuscripts for the history were used in the biography, theremainder were locked away until 1898, when they were publishedposthumously as the Historical Sketches. To make the work onCromwell even more demanding, other projects impingedon Carlyle's time: he wrote Chartism in 1839, delivered the publiclectures onHeroes and Hero-Worship in 1840, and wrote Past and Presentin 1843.63 The proximity in composition and the similarity in theme

62 T h o m a s Carlyle to J o h n A. Carlyle (26 D e c e m b e r 1838), The Collected Letters of Thomas andJane Welsh Carlyle, D u k e - E d i n b u r g h edi t ion ( D u r h a m , N .C . : D u k e Univers i ty Press ,1970-1987), 10: 250-251. Robertson's art ic le , a review of V a u g h a n ' s Protectorate andForster's Statesmen, appeared in 1839 and was another Dissenter's attempt to reassessCromwell favorably. John Robertson, "Oliver Cromwell," Westminster Review, 33 (October,1839): 181-256.

63 For a more complete account of the writing of Carlyle's Cromwell, see: James AnthonyFroude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834—1881 (London: Longmans,Green and Co., 1884), 1: 149—364. C. H. Firth, introduction to Thomas Carlyle, Letters andSpeeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. S. C. Lomas (London: Methuen and Co., 1904), 1: xxi-xxxiii.For some recent appraisals of Carlyle as a historian, see: John D. Rosenberg, Carlyle andthe Burden of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). A. Dwight Culler, The VictorianMirror of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 39—73. Rosemary Jann, The Artand Science of Victorian History (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1985), 33-65.For the controversy over the "Squire papers," a set of forgeries that Carlyle was

118 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

suggest that all these works, including Cromwell, were actually onecreative effort. When the biography of Cromwell did finally appearin 1845. ^ was> much to its author's surprise, a great success. Eventhose most critical of the book admitted that Carlyle had seenbetter than anyone before him the importance of Puritanism as thekey to both Cromwell and the seventeenth century. "It was anhistorical event," S. R. Gardiner observed many years later,"changing our whole conception of English history in its most heroicperiod."**

Carlyle once said that "a man's religion is the chief fact withregard to him,"65 and nowhere was this observation moreapplicable than to Carlyle himself. Born in Scotland, he was raisedwithin the Burgher Secession Church, a body of Dissenters amongwhom the Covenanting tradition remained strong. The Burghershad separated from the Scottish Church in the early eighteenthcentury in large part because they objected to the influence whichthe Church accorded to lay patrons in clerical appointments. TheChurch, as the Burghers saw it, had neglected its obligation tobring about that Calvinistic commonwealth in which Church andstate worked together to spread God's word and enforce His laws.True religion, they believed, could only exist among Dissenters,where the right of the congregation to elect its ministers ensureddoctrinal purity.66 Raised within this tradition, the spirit of Dissentnever left Carlyle, and it colored everything he wrote aboutcontemporary as well as seventeenth-century England. He opposedthe Established Churches in Scotland and England because theyhad long ago departed from true religion. He based the critique ofVictorian society which he presented in Past and Present partly uponthe observation that England, from the Restoration onward, haddeviated from the ideal of the Godly community, and his remedy

persuaded to accept as genuine, see Clyde de L. Ryals, "Thomas Carlyle and the SquireForgeries," Victorian Studies, 30 (1987): 495-518.

64 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "A New Book by Carlyle," Daily News, 28 November 1898, 7.65 T h o m a s C a r l y l e , On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, i n t h e Centenary Edition of

the Works of Thomas Carlyle, ed. H. D. Traill (London: Chapman and Hall, 1896-1899), 5: 2.66 For the Secession Church, see John M'Kerrow, History of the Secession Church, revised and

enlarged edition (Edinburgh: A. Fullarton and Co., 1848), 1-82. For a discussion of therole of the "Godly commonwealth" in early nineteenth-century Scottish religiousthinking, see Stewart J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), xv-xviii, 43-49, 70-72. See also Andrew L.Drummond and James Bulloch, The Scottish Church, 1688-1843: The Age of the Moderates(Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1973), 40—44.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 119for the nation's ills was to bring that ideal somehow back intopractice. He praised Cromwell for defeating the false Establish-ment of Laud and Charles I, for tolerating the Sectaries, and forattempting to create in England a commonwealth based onScriptural law.

Intending to enter the ministry, Carlyle attended the Universityof Edinburgh, but in the course of his studies lost his faith. Thecontradiction between the Evangelicalism of his youth and themoderate theology then prevalent at Edinburgh provoked aspiritual crisis that marked him for life. He turned to Germanphilosophy and after a conversion experience regained a semblanceof his faith, clothing it now in metaphysics. Carlyle portrayed thisspiritual odyssey in his first major book, SartorResartus, written earlyin the 1830s. Though Carlyle's religious outlook at this time wascertainly not Christian, it did retain many of the assumptions of hisearly Calvinism. As his disciple and biographer, James AnthonyFroude, put it, Carlyle remained a "Calvinist without thetheology."67 Carlyle's thinking was always predestinarian. Hebelieved there was a God in heaven, and that God's laws, or God'sjustice, reigned on earth. If men and women did not live accordingto these laws, then God would have his revenge, usually in someapocalyptic event, which would punish them for their errors andredirect their affairs. The history of mankind was predestinedbecause it would, in one way or another, conform to these laws.Carlyle also believed in the elect, or as he termed it, in heroes. Thehero was that person who believed in God and God's justice, whothus had insight into the divine, who understood his duties and hadthe strength to fulfill them, and who would succeed because healone had God's sanction for what he did. The hero was of the elect,and his success was proof of his election. Ordinary men and women,Carlyle further argued, were for the most part ignorant of God'slaws, and it was their duty to obey the elect, to worship the hero.Finally, Carlyle placed great stress on work, and showed nothingbut contempt for idleness. Man's purpose on earth was to work, andwork alone was noble and virtuous. Speaking in praise of his father,Carlyle wrote: "[he knew] that man was created to work - not tospeculate, or feel, or dream. Accordingly he set his whole heart

67 James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of the First Forty Years of His Life, 1795-1835(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1882), 2: 2.

120 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

thitherwards. He did work wisely and unweariedly."68 Thisemphasis on God's justice and predestination, on the heroic andthe elect, on obedience and duty, and above all on work, reflects theCalvinism of Carlyle's childhood spent among the Dissenters inthe rural borderlands of Southern Scotland.69 Carlyle valuedimmensely this Calvinism, or "Puritanism," as he often termed it.He wrote in his book on Cromwell that England's most valuablepossession was its Puritan heritage of the seventeenth century, andhe described this heritage as a "Scotch mist" coming down onEngland "from the land of [John] Knox," hinting that England'smost valuable possession was, in fact, of Scottish origin.70

Carlyle's immersion in Calvinism and Dissent drew him - almostinexorably it seems - to the Puritan past. As early as 1817, he wasreading deeply in English history and, like other Dissenters atthe time, was soon attracted to the Commonwealth. "OliverCromwell's reign," he remarked to his brother in 1820, "is moreinteresting than any other." Two years later he was contemplatingwriting a book on the Civil War and Commonwealth that would use"mental portraits" of such worthies as Milton, Cromwell, Laud, Foxand Hyde in order to illustrate "some features of the nationalcharacter as it was then displayed." The project, however, was shortlived, perhaps because he had not yet developed a meaningful inter-pretation of the period. The subject, he said, had lost its "charm."71

Carlyle's interest in Puritanism revived a decade later when hediscovered by accident some books about John Knox and the

68 Thomas Carlyle, Reminiscences, ed. James Anthony Froude (London: Longmans, Greenand Co., 1881), 1: 10.

69 For the development of Carlyle's religious thinking, see: Charles Frederick Harrold,Carlyle and German Thought: i8i^-igj4, Yale Studies in English, vol. 82 (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1934), and "The Nature of Carlyle's Calvinism," Studies in Philology, 33(July, 1936): 475-486. G. B. Tennyson, Sartor Called Resartus: The Genesis, Structure and Styleof Thomas Carlyle's First Major Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). PeterAllan Dale, The Victorian Critic and the Idea of History: Carlyle, Arnold, Pater (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1977), 15-88. David J. DeLaura, "Carlyle and Arnold: TheReligious Issue," in K. J. Fielding and Roger L. Tarr, eds., Carlyle Past and Present: ACollection of New Essays (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976), 127-154.

70 T h o m a s Carlyle, Historical Sketches of Notable Persons and Events in the Reigns of James I andCharles I, ed. Alexander Carlyle (London: Chapman and Hall, 1898), 15.

71 Thomas Carlyle to Robert Mitchell (19 November 1817), to James Johnston (20 November1817), to John A. Carlyle (29 March 1820), to Matthew Allen (19 May 1820), to James

Johnston (8 April 1822), to Alexander Carlyle (27 April 1822), and to Jane Baillie Welsh(28 October 1822), Collected Letters, 1: 112-113, 115, 237, 252, 2: 84, 94, 189. Thomas Carlyle,Two Note Books of Thomas Carlyle: From 23d March 1822 to 16th May 1832, ed. Charles EliotNorton (New York: The Grolier Club, 1898), 1-31.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 121Scottish Reformation. He had spent much of 1831 and 1832 inLondon, trying to interest publishers in Sartor and watching withalarm the progress of English politics during the crisis overParliamentary reform. Like many others, he feared that Englandwas heading toward revolution. Modernity, he worried, with itsemphasis on industry and commerce, on mechanism and material-ism, had destroyed the fabric of traditional society and had removedthe religious bonds which had once held that society together. Withthe old sources of authority gone and nothing adequate in theirplace, England appeared on the brink of anarchy.72 Turning at thiscrisis to the Scottish Church during the Reformation, Carlyleconcluded that in contrast to all other Protestant churches, it alonehad been a "real Church."73 In Scottish Calvinism of the sixteenthcentury, Carlyle saw the kind of authentic religion that England inthe 1830s so desperately needed - a religion capable of impressingupon ordinary men and women the existence of a divine order anda sense of their mutual responsibilities. At a time of political unrest,a Puritan hero such as John Knox provided a welcome example oftrue leadership. "I find in Knox," Carlyle explained, "one of thoseunmanageable fellows who once for all have taken in hand to actand speak not respectably but honestly; and have no manner ofnotion that God's Truth should alter its attitude for man's pleasure,be the man who he may: a true Reformer, of the sort much wantednow and always, seldom rarer than now."74

This conception of Puritanism as a genuine religiosity and of thePuritan hero as an authentic leader capable of ensuring that humanaffairs conformed to God's plan would provide the basis forCarlyle's future reflections on the Puritan past. Alarmed by thecourse of liberal reform, Carlyle had found in Puritanism areverence for authority and social order that he saw as a reassuringantidote to the social disintegration caused by the collapse oftraditional belief. Receptive to the rhetoric of seventeenth-centuryPuritanism, he would adapt it to his own purposes, molding it intoan idiosyncratic, but verbally powerful, critique of contemporaryBritish institutions. It was this openness to the language andspirit of Puritanism that ultimately set Carlyle apart from other

72 Thomas Carlyle to John A. Carlyle (13 November 1831), Collected Letters, 6: 52.73 Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill (19 November 1832), ibid., 6: 260-261.74 Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill (12 January 1833), ibid., 6: 303.

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historians and enabled him to recapture the Puritans' own under-standing of their accomplishments.

Carlyle's final and most prolonged engagement with Puritanismbegan in the late 1830s. His fascination with the Scottish Refor-mation and the English Civil War would influence the lectures onHeroes and Hero-Worship as well as Past and Present, and it wouldreceive its fullest expression in his edition of Cromwell's Letters andSpeeches in 1845. Beneath this preoccupation with the Puritan pastlay Carlyle's deepening fears about England's troubled condition asthe economic distress of the late 1830s and early 1840s turned intoone of the worst depressions of the century. What disturbed himmost was the apparent inability of England's leaders to dealeffectively with this impending crisis. The Reform Act of 1832 hadpromised a time of improvement, but the emergence of Chartismand the Anti-Corn Law agitation made it abundantly clear that theWhigs and their Tory successors were unable to bring this about.The failure of reform fed Carlyle's anger and in his writings heattacked what he considered to be the errors of his age: the selfish-ness of politicians, the ineffectiveness of Parliamentary democracy,the idleness of the aristocracy, the greed of the industrialists, theinhumanity of classical economics, the spiritual barrenness ofBenthamite utilitarianism, and the atheism of the AnglicanChurch, which he believed had lapsed into the worship of formulasand was no longer able to see into the essence of things. WithChartism, written in 1839, Carlyle began an assault on England'scontemporary institutions which he sustained into the 1850s withthe publication of the Latter-Day Pamphlets. His book on Cromwellwas part of this campaign.

When he delivered his lectures on Heroes and Hero-Worship in 1840,Carlyle had much to say about Knox, the Puritan priest, andCromwell, the Puritan king. The hero for Carlyle was that rareindividual who understood God's laws, realized them on earth andthereby imposed order on chaos. The nineteenth century was a timeof revolution and disorder precisely because it lacked heroes andhero-worship. Developing his earlier thoughts on the ScottishReformation, Carlyle described Knox as an example of the hero aspriest and reformer in order to criticize implicitly the would-bereformers of his own day. Neither radical nor Benthamite, Whig norTory, as far as Carlyle was concerned, shared Knox's genuinesense of the divine. Lecturing on Cromwell and placing him in the

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 123

category of the hero as king, Carlyle sketched much of theinterpretation that he would express later in the Letters and Speeches.For Carlyle, Cromwell was a Christian hero, sincere in his faith andambitious in a purely heroic way. Those historians, who viewedthe seventeenth century solely in political terms and criticizedCromwell for deserting the republican cause in order to makehimself king, had totally missed the point. The Civil War, Carlyleinsisted, was actually a religious struggle of Puritan "Beliefagainst Laudian "Unbelief." Throughout his career, Cromwelllabored to create that Puritan commonwealth of which Knox haddreamed, and never once did he desert this cause. Under hisleadership and inspired by a true religiosity, England momentarilyachieved greatness.75

In Past and Present, Carlyle presented a compelling critique ofearly industrial society. Attributing the problems of his ageultimately to the erosion of religious belief, he offered a spiritualsolution. What England needed, he urged, adopting the language ofthe Puritan sermon, was a new reformation. The return of theStuarts in 1660 had marked the defeat of Puritanism and hadbrought the English Reformation to an end. Atheism hadtriumphed, and to this fact Carlyle traced many of the nation'sills.76 England needed in the nineteenth century a spiritualreawakening that would provide men and women with an under-standing of their duties to one another and compel them to work forthe good of the community. England required a new hero, someonewho understood God's justice, who would teach the people thoseCalvinistic values which Carlyle cherished, and who would finishthe work that he believed Cromwell had begun.

For Carlyle, Puritanism was the culmination, the most heroicphase of the English Reformation. The Puritans, with Cromwell astheir leader, were true believers who attacked the false Church ofArchbishop Laud, and the false kingship of Charles I. They broughta terrible justice to Ireland, and by creating a Godly common-wealth, they attempted to bring true government to England.Cromwell and the Puritans carried out in the seventeenth centurythat very assault on traditional, but empty institutions whichCarlyle was urging in his own age. In Cromwell, Carlyle had foundthe model hero. Oliver Cromwell, he declared in Past and Present,

75 Carlyle, Works, 5: 204-237. 76 Ibid., 10: 166-169.

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"remains to me by far the remarkablest Governor we have had herefor the last five centuries or so . . . When you consider that Oliverbelieved in a God, the difference between Oliver's position and thatof any subsequent Governor of this Country becomes . . . the moreimmeasurable!"77 Carlyle put forth this image of Cromwell hoping,but not really believing, that it might inspire England in the nine-teenth century to an even greater Puritanism. As he wrote to RalphWaldo Emerson in 1842: "My heart is sick and sore in behalf of myown poor generation; nay, I feel withal as if the one hope of help forit consisted in the possibility of new Cromwells, and new Puritans:thus do the two centuries stand related to me, the seventeenthworthless except precisely in so far as it can be made the nineteenth;and yet let anybody try that enterprise!"78

The Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell was by all counts anunusual work. Unable to master the materials of Cromwell's lifeand mold them into a balanced narrative, Carlyle abandoned thetask of author for that of editor. Gathering together all Cromwell'sknown utterances and providing them with elucidations, he allowedthe letters and speeches to furnish the book with its basic structure.The result was a biography lacking proportion. As an editor, Carlylehardly compensated for the imperfections, digressions andomissions found in Cromwell's surviving statements. Despite thisdrawback, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches produced a powerfulimpression on its readers. In part, this was because Cromwell,through his own words, presented a more vivid and favorableportrait of himself than had any previous biographer. But above all,the book's effectiveness was due to Carlyle's vision of what theseventeenth century was about. As he imagined it, England duringthe Civil War was in the midst of a desperate struggle betweenLight and Darkness, God and the Devil, and Carlyle's prose, with itsBiblical resonances, was admirably suited to convey such an image.At times, he seemed to deny that he was even writing conventionalhistory. To the contrary, he was creating a Cromwelliad, an epicpoem of the Civil War and Protectorate.79

Religion for Carlyle formed the essence of the seventeenthcentury. The most important transaction in Europe during this

77 Ibid., 10: 222.78 Thomas Carlyle to Ralph Waldo Emerson (29 August 1842), Collected Letters, 15: 57.79 Carlyle, Works, 6: 5-6, 12-13.

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period was the heroic "struggle of Protestantism againstCatholicism," of true religion against false, and the Civil War inEngland, the "armed Appeal of Puritanism" against the"Ceremonialism" of Laud and Charles I, was one manifestation ofthis larger controversy.80 Carlyle saw Puritanism as an intensereligiosity. It consisted in a personal relationship between a manand his God, in which the individual was painfully aware thatheaven and hell were real, that he had a soul to save, and that itssalvation depended on his acting in accordance with God's laws.Within this relationship neither priests nor sacraments played animportant role, which explained why Puritanism was foundedprimarily outside the Established Church, among the Independentsand Sectaries. Because of its emphasis on conduct, Puritanism wasalso a powerful moral force. It was the principal impetus behind theParliamentary party and a reforming influence in both Churchand state. Opposed to Puritanism was the sham religion of theAnglicans and the Presbyterians. Because of its "Ceremonialism,"its preoccupation with the outward forms of religion, the Anglicanfaith as practiced by Archbishop Laud had lost its insight into thedivine and was no longer able to inspire true piety or moral conduct.In this failing it resembled Roman Catholicism. Also bound up inimages were the Presbyterians of Scotland. Their Covenant waslittle more than a "formula" and their loyalty to the fraudulentStuart kings reflected their inability to see beyond outward appear-ances.81 Conceived in this manner, England's seventeenth centurybecame an immense war of religion in which constitutional issuesplayed absolutely no role. Do not, Carlyle admonished his readers,"imagine that it was Constitution, . . . Privilege of Parliament,Triennial or Annual Parliaments, or any modification of these . . .that mainly animated our Cromwells, Pyms, and Hampdens." Theywere "inspired by a Heavenly Purpose. To see God's own Law . . .made good in this world;... it was a thing worth living for and dyingfor!"82

Carlyle's greatest achievement was to see clearly that Cromwellhad always been a sincerely religious man. He was the perfectPuritan, and the transforming episode in his life was the religiousconversion he experienced sometime in 1623. Cromwell began asan honest gentleman farmer, prone to the melancholia and

80 Ibid., 6: 39, 41. 81 Ibid., 6: 64, 7: 169-171. »2 Ibid., 6: 81-82.

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hypochondria that came from contemplating "in thick darkness"the possibility of a meaningless world, whose despair was overcomeonce the "eternal ways and the celestial guiding-stars disclose [d]themselves." Cromwell's conversion as portrayed by Carlyle, his"clear recognition of Calvinistic Christianity" and his "deliverancefrom the jaws of Eternal Death," bore a striking resemblance toTeufelsdrockh's conversion in SartorResartus, and, to the extent thatSartor was autobiographical, to Carlyle's own conversion. In allthree instances, the experience produced an acute awareness of themoral obligation to do right instead of wrong which became a callto work. After his conversion, Cromwell sensed that the "differencebetween Right and Wrong had filled all Time and all Space for man,and bodied itself forth into a Heaven and Hell for him," and itwas this realization that made him a Puritan.83 Because of theircommon religious background, Carlyle found Cromwell asympathetic subject and although he emphasized their similaritiesprobably to the point of distortion, his insight into Cromwell'sreligion enabled him to rehabilitate his character. Above all, itallowed him to refute the charge of hypocrisy. A Puritan such asCromwell, who believed in the salvation of his soul, would«not riskdamnation by prevaricating before his God.84 Cromwell's words,Carlyle urged, must be taken for the truth. And having establishedhis hero's basic honesty, Carlyle put an end to the accusation ofambition: for Cromwell stated repeatedly that personal gain hadnever been his object. He had worked first for the glory of God, thenfor the interests of the Godly in England, and finally for the rightsand privileges of Parliament. Carlyle accepted these statements atface value and he urged his readers to do the same.

Cromwell attributed his success in all his endeavors to divineProvidence. He viewed the favorable outcome of events as a sign ofGod's approval for the policies he had pursued and here Carlyletook him at his word. In the Civil War, Cromwell and the "EternalLaws" were on one side, the enemies of God on the other, andthe outcome of the struggle was foretold.85 Carlyle attributedCromwell's rise to Protector, not to his ambition, hypocrisy oropportunism, but to the working of God's will. After each of hismilitary conquests, Cromwell explicitly denied that the triumphwas his. "Give glory, all the glory, to God," he wrote following his

83 Ibid., 6: 50-51. 84 Ibid., 6: 80-81. 85 Ibid., 6: 59, 68.

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victory at Marston Moor, and he voiced similar thoughts afterdefeating the Royalists decisively as Naseby: "this is none otherbut the hand of God; and to Him alone belongs the glory."86 Thevictories in the Civil War, Cromwell suggested, were Providentialsigns that God had called on the army to challenge the king, andCarlyle, writing in the same spirit, turned his execution into an actof divine retribution. No event in modern history was "graver" thanwhen the army, marching on London, demanded the king's trial. Itwas a spectacle "earnest as very Death and Judgment." They had"decided to have Justice, these men; to see God's justice done, andHis judgments executed on this Earth." The High Court, findingthe king guilty and sentencing him to die, was "executing thejudgments of Heaven above, and had not the fear of any man orthing on the Earth below."87

The beheading of Charles I, Carlyle argued, put an end to"Flunkyism" and "Cant," demonstrating that the fraudulent couldno longer rule the genuine. Having fought the Civil War in order topull down "Idolatrous Kingships," Cromwell and the army had nowthe daunting task of "setting-up Religious Commonwealths," ofbringing God's law to bear on earth.88 By emphasizing thatCromwell's motives were primarily religious, Carlyle avoided theproblems of interpretation that arose from his alleged politicalapostasy. Cromwell should be judged not as a republican whoturned against the republican cause, but as a sincere Puritanwho worked consistently and heroically to make England aPuritan nation. He dismissed the Rump Parliament because itsmembers were of insufficient caliber "to realise the high dream ofthose old Puritan hearts," and he convened the Little Parliament,hoping that a "Real Assembly of the Puritan Notables" would beable to create at last a Godly commonwealth. He dismissed his firstProtectorate Parliament because it had done nothing to promotethe Puritan interest, and he instituted the Major Generals in orderto place power in the hands of the Godly.89 Addressing his secondProtectorate Parliament, Cromwell made plain his objectives:England, he said, needed a new reformation, a worthy ministry, areform of the law, a profound change in manners, a victory over the"Profaneness, Disorder and Wickedness" formerly associated with

86 Ibid., 6: 188, 215. 87 Ibid., 6: 404-405, 408, 412.88 Ibid., 6: 414, 7: 2. 89 Ibid., 8: 22-26, 38, 73-74, 78-80, 166-167, 201-203.

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the Cavaliers, and toleration toward all those who practiced theirreligion quietly and peacefully since that was the true cause forwhich the Puritans had fought.90 To judge Cromwell againstmodern standards and to condemn him for ruling unconstitution-ally and often arbitrarily was thus to miss the point entirely. He wasa Puritan striving to implement the will of God, not a usurperpursuing his own ambition.

The Puritans never finished building their Godly commonwealthand much of what they did manage to build was dismantled afterthe Restoration. With the death of Cromwell, Puritanism "fell intoKinglessness, what we call Anarchy," and "proved, by trial after trial,. . . that a Government of England by it was henceforth animpossibility."91 The rapid collapse of the Puritan movement, whichCarlyle did not deny, posed a serious problem for its eulogist: ifPuritanism was truly of God, then why had Providence allowed it tofail so thoroughly? "My friend," Carlyle answered, "Puritanism wasnot the Complete Theory of this immense Universe; no, only a partthereof! To me it seems, in my hours of hope, as if the Destiniesmeant something grander with England than even Oliver Protectordid!"92 In the end, Carlyle fell back upon a cyclical view of historybased on alternating periods of belief and unbelief and derived inpart from his readings in the German Romantics and the FrenchSaint Simonians.93 Puritanism had flourished once in the seven-teenth century, the Restoration had ushered in an age of anarchyand atheism, but they too would perish in the future when a new,even greater Puritanism would arise.

With the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Carlyle continuedthe attack against early Victorian liberalism that he had initiatedearlier in Chartism and Past and Present. Compared to the consider-able problems that plagued them in the 1830s and 1840s, thegovernments of Melbourne and Peel seemed inept, and theirapparent inability to solve England's pressing social problemsturned Carlyle into a critic of Parliamentary democracy. If such

90 Ibid., 8: 290-291, 293, 296-298. 91 Ibid., 9: 183. 92 Ibid., 9: 184.93 For the debate surrounding Carlyle's general scheme of history, see: Harrold, Carlyle and

German Thought, 66, 171-176. Hill Shine, Carlyle and the Saint-Simonians: The Concept ofHistorical Periodicity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1941). Rene Wellek, "Carlyleand the Philosophy of History," Confrontations: Studies in the Intellectual and Literary Relationsbetween Germany, England, and the United States during the Nineteenth Century (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1965), 82-100. Culler, Victorian Mirror of History, 44-47, 50-73.Jann, Art and Science of Victorian History, 38-41.

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governments were the best the electoral system could produce,then clearly England needed something else. Not surprisingly,Carlyle pointed to Cromwell as an example of the type of leader-ship he preferred. The Calvinistic doctrine of the elect, whichpermeated his political thinking, provided the premise for hiscritique. According to the Calvinist, the elect were entitled togovern because they alone were chosen by God and because theyhad verified their election by worldly success. To assume that themass of the nation could do the work of God and select their trueleaders was for Carlyle the great misconception underlyingrepresentative government. A nation of mediocrities, left to its owndevices, would return Parliaments of mediocrity, totally unqualifiedfor governing. In his account of the Civil War, Carlyle made hisviews on Parliamentary democracy clear: only Cromwell and thearmy, chosen on the field of battle, were capable of effectiveleadership. In contrast to the hesitation and pettiness of Parlia-ment, Carlyle emphasized the decisiveness and wisdom ofCromwell.

Carlyle's assault on Parliamentary government amounted to anextended satire on the tendency of popular assemblies to mire in"Red-tape" and meaningless discussion. At no time was hiscontempt for representative institutions more evident than in hisassessment of the Rump. Realizing that they could not sit forever,the members of this "Fag-end" of the Long Parliament had resolvedto dismiss themselves, and yet, having decided on an act so simpleas this, they found it a deed impossible to accomplish. All they couldachieve, Carlyle wryly commented, was to debate and then agree todebate some more. Nor did their incompetence end here. Resolvingat one point to attempt a reform of England's property laws, theRump, disputing all the while, could not even define the term"incumbrance."Incumbrance [Carlyle wrote sardonically]: yes, but what is "incum-brance"? . . . No mortal can tell. They sit debating it, painfully sifting it,"for three months"; three months by Booker's Almanac, and the ZodiacHorologe: March violets have become June roses; and still they debatewhat "incumbrance" is; - and indeed, I think could never fix it at all; andare perhaps debating it, if so doomed, in some twilight foggy section ofDante's Nether World, to all Eternity, at this hour!

Obviously the Rump was of insufficient caliber to govern Englandand bring God's laws to bear on earth. Obsessed with talking and

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unconcerned with acting, this Parliament had to go, and Cromwell,who understood its failings, dismissed it in one decisive act.94

In contrast to his scorn for representative institutions, Carlylebestowed only praise on Cromwell and the army. One of his favoriteconceits was to denounce Parliament as a "Talking Apparatus"while lauding the army as an "Acting Apparatus."95 If England musthave a Parliament, then it should resemble as closely as possiblethis "Army Parliament" of the seventeenth century. While theRump was pointlessly disputing the meaning of "incumbrance,"Cromwell was preserving the Commonwealth by acting decisivelyon the battlefield. The "destiny of this Commonwealth," Carlylestressed, was decided not during the sessions at Westminster, but"in Oliver Cromwell's fightings." It was the prompting of the armythat convinced Cromwell to dissolve the Rump, and at this moment,Carlyle wondered, what would have become of England if she "hadnot still her Army Parliament, rigorous devout Council of Officers,men in right life-and-death earnest, who have spent their blood inthis Cause?" Finally, it was Cromwell, acting independently ofParliament, who began to build the Godly commonwealth, whocreated in England a genuine "Gospel Ministry," who reformedthe Court of Chancery, and who established England's foreignrelations.96

To see Cromwell as a critic of Parliamentary government wasnot without some justification. The Protector was not adept atmanaging his Parliaments and, as his speeches revealed, headdressed them at times in words which Carlyle himself might havewritten. When dismissing his first Protectorate Parliament, forinstance, Cromwell pointed out that the arrival of peace had giventhis assembly a unique opportunity to implement God's will, toenact good laws, and in general to answer the grievances of thenation. But in fact, it had done nothing of the sort. "I do not knowwhat you have been doing!" Cromwell declared in frustration: "I donot know whether you have been alive or dead . . . You have whollyelapsed your time, and done just nothing!" Within this finalaccusation lay the kernel of Carlyle's hostility toward represen-tative government. When he delivered his opening speech to hissecond Protectorate Parliament, Cromwell began by expressing thesame distrust for words and the same preference for deeds that

94 Carlyle, Works, 8: 4-6, 17, 22. 95 Ibid., 9: 179. 96 Ibid., 8: 3-4, 22, 90-94.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 131Carlyle would later become famous for: "Rhetoricians, whom I donot pretend to [much concern with]; neither with them, nor withwhat they use to deal in: Words! Truly our business is to speakThings!" And then, having outlined the work which this assemblymust do, Cromwell continued to emphasize the need to act:"Doubting, hesitating men, they are not fit for your work . . . Thosethat are called to this work, it will not depend [for them] uponformalities, nor notions, nor speeches!. . . Therefore I beseech you,do not dispute of unnecessary and unprofitable things which maydivert you from carrying on so glorious a work as this is."97 Livingthrough troubled times, both Cromwell and his biographer shareda deep frustration with the apparent inability of Parliamentarygovernment to comprehend the larger issues and act with deter-mination. As Carlyle began to define his own political position, thespeeches of Oliver Cromwell, delivered almost two centuriesbefore, were certainly a fertile source of inspiration.

The one area where Carlyle believed that liberal policies werefailing most drastically was Ireland. Ever since the writing ofChartism, the Irish problem had worried Carlyle, and his accountof Irish affairs in his biography of Cromwell gave him an oppor-tunity to reflect on one of its possible solutions. For Carlyle, theIrish problem was one of work - the Irish were capable of immenselabor when managed honestly, there was an abundance of workto be done, and yet no one was doing it. Ireland was idle, andunemployment, starvation and beggary were the consequences.The difficulties of governing Ireland had plagued the English atleast as far back as the seventeenth century, and in Cromwell'spolicies Carlyle found the only viable solution to the nation'sproblems. As a result of Cromwell's military victory, the Irish werebrought under an "improved" aristocracy, and they were put towork, "ploughing, delving, hammering." Cromwell transformedthem into a productive nation and, had his settlement survived, hewould have made them Puritans as well.98 Here for Carlyle was aneffective solution to the Irish question, but unfortunately it was notallowed to run its course. The Restoration destroyed most of whatCromwell had accomplished, and Ireland was left to develop onits own, "not in the drabcoloured Puritan way."99 As Carlyleunderstood it, the Irish problem of the 1840s was the inevitable

97 Ibid., 8: 170-171, 181, 268, 305. 98 Ibid, 7: 167. 99 Ibid., 7: 168.

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consequence of the Restoration, and the real injustice of theEnglish in Ireland was that they had put an end to the process thatCromwell had begun. In order to be saved, Ireland must suffer inthe nineteenth century a Cromwellian settlement more thoroughthan the last, and like before, this arrangement would not beimplemented peacefully, or by philanthropy: Oliver Cromwell,Carlyle pointed out, "did not believe in the rose-water plan ofSurgery; -which, in fact, is this Editor's case too!"100

IV

Despite its urgency, Carlyle's image of Cromwell as the greatChristian hero hardly convinced all his readers. The religiousdivisions of the seventeenth century were still very much alive inthe 1840s and not everyone was prepared to embrace Cromwell andthe Puritans as wholeheartedly as Carlyle had. Writing in theCatholic Dublin Review, the Maynooth Professor George Crollydeclared that nothing of value could be found in Carlyle's book, ajudgment which was not unexpected since Carlyle had tried tovindicate what Crolly saw as the atrocities of Cromwell's Irishcampaign. Carlyle's "two great volumes," Crolly wrote, were "aninterminable sermon, written in the most approved cant ofmethodism," and their subject, Puritanism, was certainly notheroic: it was "a madness, an imposture,... a senseless fanaticism."Crolly's main complaint, however, was not that Carlyle had praisedthe Puritans, but that he longed for "the return of those timeswhose faith was the most abominable hypocrisy and the mostdiabolical bigotry."101 Equally hostile was the review in the ChristianRemembrancer, written by its High Church and Tractarian editor,J. B. Mozley. Tracing their own practices back to the Church ofArchbishop Laud, the High Churchmen could not endure a bookthat abused both the Laudians and their nineteenth-centuryfollowers. Far from being a hero, Cromwell was little more than asuccessful hypocrite, dissembler, bigot and regicide, and Mozley'sreview formed one long litany of his sins. Nor in his opinion were the

100 Ibid., 7: 51. See also Carlyle's essays on Irish subjects, published in 1848 and 1849 andreprinted in Rescued Essays of Thomas Carlyle, ed. Percy Newberry (London: The LeadenhallPress, 1892).

101 [George Crolly], "The Great Irish Insurrection,"Dublin Review, 21 (September, 1846): 66,68, 69.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 133Puritans heroes. They had made religion ridiculous, and to glorifythem was to reverse two centuries of received wisdom.102 Writing inthe conservative Blackwood's Magazine, William Henry Smith waswilling to accept Carlyle's assessment of Cromwell as a sincerePuritan. If nothing else, his letters had established beyond doubtthat Cromwell was not a hypocrite who merely used the language ofPuritanism to promote his own ambition. But Smith could not agreewith Carlyle that Puritanism was either admirable or the panaceafor England's current ills. The Puritans lacked humanity, theirreligious enthusiasm blinded them to right and wrong, and theirbelief in Providence justified the most extreme acts of violence. Arevival of Puritanism in the nineteenth century, Smith predicted,would result in a religious war that would benefit no one. "If churchand dissent should take up arms," he wrote, "and . . . should blowout each other's brains with gunpowder, then Mr Carlyle would seehis 'heroic ones' revive upon the earth."103

The Dissenters, however, were more receptive to Carlyle's workand for the most part welcomed his image of Cromwell as aChristian hero who did his best to establish a Godly commonwealth.Robert Vaughan expressed their position: Carlyle's biography was"on the whole, the most satisfactory in our language" becauseCarlyle alone had done "justice to the religion of Cromwell." Whereother biographers had recognized in Cromwell the great soldierand statesman, Carlyle had seen the religious hero.104John Forster,writing almost two decades after he had published his Statesmen ofthe Commonwealth, now acknowledged that his earlier portrait ofCromwell had been woefully inadequate. By bringing together theLetters and Speeches, Carlyle had discredited not only the Toryinterpretation of Cromwell as a dissembling, hypocritical regicide,but also Forster's own denunciation of Cromwell as a traitor toliberty. From Cromwell's words, Forster now explained, "there . . .broke forth the utterance of a true man, of a consistency ofcharacter perfect to an heroic degree." Carlyle had shownabsolutely: "That this Cromwell was no hypocrite or actor of plays

102 [J. B. Mozley], "Carlyle's Cromwell," Christian Remembrancer, n (April, 1846): 258-261. ForMozley's account of Cromwell's rise to power, see 262-302.

103 [William Henry Smith], "Cromwell,"Blackwood'sEdinburgh Magazine, 61 (April, 1847): 394,399-4OI-

104 [Robert Vaughan], "Cromwell's Letters," British Quarterly Review, 3 (February, 1846): 51,60-61.

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. . . , was no victim of ambition, was no seeker after sovereignty ortemporal power. That he was a man whose every thought was withthe Eternal, - a man of a great, robust, massive mind, and of anhonest, stout, English heart." Surely, few historians have changedtheir minds as completely as Forster. Cromwell's purpose, he nowemphasized, "was to serve the Lord." When the other republicansrefused to go along with him, Cromwell "did well to strike themfrom his path."105 Writing on Cromwell in the Contemporary Review,the Presbyterian essayist Peter Bayne similarly praised Carlyle'sachievement: the Letters and Speeches, Bayne declared, was his"greatest book." Before Carlyle, Cromwell's "life was unintelli-gible." By identifying Puritanism as the single factor givingconsistency and meaning to Cromwell's conduct, Carlyle had"raised him from the dead."106

But the Dissenters' approval was not without qualification.Vaughan, for one, lamented that Carlyle's perverse fear of seemingdull, of having nothing provocative to say, had made him disparageunnecessarily the efforts of previous historians. Before he evenconceived his book, Vaughan asserted, the Dissenters Godwin andForster - not to mention Vaughan himself- had set in motion areappraisal of Cromwell that Carlyle, by stressing the importanceof Cromwell's religion, was only completing.107 By placing him inthe company of these other historians, Vaughan implied that withinCarlyle's work he heard the voice of evangelicalism and Dissent,even though Carlyle himself was unable, or unwilling, to acknowl-edge it. But more important, Carlyle had put Puritanism to adifferent use from most other Dissenters. Where they hoped toenlist the Puritan past in the cause of liberal reform, Carlyle hadused it to indict the modern age of a spiritual barrenness and lackof order that were in part products of the very liberalism thatVaughan, Forster and others were trying to promote. When Carlyletold his readers to disregard the political dimension of the CivilWar, he intentionally branded as unworthy much of what Dissent

105 John Forster, "The Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell," Historical and Biographical Essays(London: John Murray, 1858), 1: 279—284, 304-308, 311-317. See also John Forster, TheDebates on the Grand Remonstrance, November and December, 1641 (London: John Murray, i860),414, where the author admits that, in the wake of Carlyle's work, "the views I once heldhave suffered change in regard to the conduct and character of Cromwell."

106 p e ter Bayne, "Oliver Cromwell," Contemporary Review, 21 (February, 1873): 409—412.107 Vaughan, "Cromwell's Letters," 51-61.

Puritanism and the ideology of Dissent 135

had stood for.108 Unconvinced by his admonishment, the Dissentersin turn criticized Carlyle for undervaluing liberty. Peter Bayne, forinstance, pointed out that the great flaw in Carlyle's work was itshero-worship which, deteriorating all too easily into a celebration oftyranny, had led Carlyle to scorn unnecessarily the constitutionalaspects of the struggle against the Stuarts.109

Robert Vaughan further lamented Carlyle's "one-sidedness."While he was admirably open and receptive to the past, he was blindto the present. Critical of the age in which he lived, he was unableto appreciate its virtues. Had he only opened his eyes, he wouldhave seen in modern Dissent a contemporary Puritanism as vital,sincere and pious as its seventeenth-century predecessor. "In GreatBritain," Vaughan pointed out, "there are, at this moment, someten thousand pulpits in which the doctrines of our old puritanism,as to the substance of them, are constantly preached; before whichmultitudes listen . . . with a conviction not less sincere than that ofthe men whom we see storming the breach or crossing the battle-field at the bidding of Cromwell." That even greater Puritanismwhich Carlyle had sought to inspire, Vaughan declared, had in factalready arisen, and if the state were to abuse the liberties ofpresent-day England as it had under the Stuarts, then thesemodern Puritans, these modern Dissenters, would come once againto their defense: "Place our civil constitution in abeyance, tax menwithout their consent, imprison them without law . . . ; silence theten thousand men who preach Christ's holy gospel to these people,shut up their sanctuaries, summon them to your courts of StarChamber and High Commission . . . - do all this, ye scorners ofmodern puritanism, if you dare, and then see if Marston Moor andNaseby Fight may not be in a fair way of coming back again!"110

In drawing this parallel between contemporary Dissent andseventeenth-century Puritanism, Vaughan captured the atmos-phere in which Nonconformist politics would operate after themiddle of the century. Taking their insights from Carlyle's work,Nonconformist biographers would portray Cromwell as thereligious hero who was drawn into politics not because of worldly

108 Carlyle, Works, 5: 208-211.109 P e t e r B a y n e , Lessons from My Masters: Carlyle, Tennyson and Ruskin ( N e w York: H a r p e r a n d

Brothers, 1879), 61-62, 65-68, and "The Younger Vane," Contemporary Review, 21 (March,1873): 673-674.

110 Vaughan, "Cromwell's Letters," 61-64. Vaughan's italics.

136 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

ambition, but because of his duty to God. Hoping to inspire ayounger generation to increased political activity, they wouldpresent Cromwell as an example worthy of emulation, arguing thatfor Cromwell liberal politics were the outward expression of aninward piety. Carlyle's unique understanding of England's Puritanpast, despite its reactionary tendencies, would provide theseDissenters with a means to infuse modern liberalism with thatreligious and moral earnestness which became characteristic of the"Nonconformist conscience." The Congregationalist minister andhistorian John Stoughton, for example, published as early as 1848 aseries of short essays on Spiritual Heroes, designed, he said, to inspire"the youthful part of the community" with examples of Puritanmartyrdom and Christian piety. The influence of Carlyle isapparent not only in the book's title, inconceivable before Carlylehad demonstrated that Puritanism could be "heroic," but in itsauthor's acknowledgment that recent scholarship had vindicatedthe Puritans from "the unjust charges preferred by their enemies."The Scottish secession minister George Gilfillan similarlypublished in 1869 his own set of lectures on Modern Christian Heroes,in which Cromwell was presented as an individual of "excellentcharacter" and "eminent piety" who "gave his country a model ofexcellence as a man and as a ruler." In his English Puritanism, acontribution to the bicentenary celebration of the BartholomewEjectment, Peter Bayne offered an appreciation of the Puritansthat united Carlyle's understanding of their religiosity with aDissenter's traditional concern for liberal policies. Their "specialglory," Bayne maintained, was that they "combined all that is seenin them by Bentham with all that is seen in them by Carlyle."111

For the Dissenters, however, Cromwell was more than a source ofpolitical inspiration. The Cromwellian past, now illuminated by theLetters and Speeches, gave the Dissenters a means to legitimate theircause in the present. By establishing the basic honesty ofCromwell's intentions, Carlyle had helped to shift attention awayfrom the vexing questions surrounding his rise to power and to

111 John Stoughton, Spiritual Heroes; Or, Sketches of the Puritans, Their Character and Times (NewYork: M. W. Dodd, 1848), v-vii. George Gilfillan, Modern Christian Heroes: A Gallery ofProtesting and Reforming Men, Including Cromwell, Milton, the Puritans, Covenanters, FirstSeceders, Methodists (London: Elliot Stock, 1869), 33, 80. Peter Bayne, English Puritanism: ItsCharacter and History, prefixed to George Gould, ed., Documents Relating to the Settlement of theChurch of England by the Act of Uniformity of 1662 (London: W. Kent and Co., 1862), 59.

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focus it instead on his achievements as Protector. Informed byCarlyle's work, Dissenters formulated an interpretation of theEnglish past that attributed the greatness of Victorian England tothe groundwork laid by Cromwell and the Puritans in the seven-teenth century. This interpretation, which gained prominence asDissent acquired political influence after the middle of the century,served to demonstrate that the Dissenters, far from playing thelargely destructive role assigned to them by their adversaries, hadin fact contributed constructively to the making of modernEngland. As Peter Bayne observed in 1862: "There is a generalfeeling that the hundred years during which the Puritan agitationwas at its height are the most memorable in the history of England.The part played by England in modern civilization was then deter-mined. The benefits, political, social, religious, which she hasenjoyed, were then secured . . . The essential aspects of our nationalcharacter, in the widest sweep of their diversity and the pro-foundest conditions of their agreement, were then displayed. Allthis, we say, is matter of general assent."112

In his final narrative of the seventeenth century, the closingvolume of his Revolutions in English History, Robert Vaughan gavesubstance to this interpretation. Building on his earlier work, heargued that Cromwell's rise to power was spontaneous and almostinevitable given his talent, and that the irregularities of his rulewere necessary due to the extensive opposition to it. Cromwell'sProtectorate was the best option available at the time since thetriumph of any of his opponents - either the royalists, Presbyteriansor republicans - would have imposed one form of tyranny oranother. "No English sovereign," Vaughan concluded, "hasgoverned England more constitutionally, none so liberally, asCromwell would have governed it, had the men of his generationbeen more men of his own order. In his mind we see the England,not merely of his own day, but of a day still to come."113 Cromwelland the Puritans, Vaughan pointed out, accomplished much thatwas lasting. Under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, Englandasserted itself on the continent, its army rivaling the soldiers ofFrance and Spain, its navy surpassing that of the United Provinces.

112 Bayne, English Puritanism, i.113 Robert Vaughan, Revolutions in English History (London: Longman, Green, Longman,

Roberts, and Green, 1863), 3: 392-396.

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The Navigation Act prepared the foundation for England'scommercial supremacy by wresting the carrying trade from theDutch, while the empire in the West Indies began with the captureof Jamaica. The triumph of the Puritans gave great encouragementto manufacturing and trade since they were drawn primarily fromthe classes engaged in those pursuits. The licentiousness of theStuart court was replaced by the sobriety of the Puritans, estab-lishing an impeccable standard of domestic virtue. Englishliterature reached new heights in Milton, science with the dis-coveries of Harvey and Boyle. Neither hypocrites nor fanatics, thePuritans were sincere in their piety. They were the first to under-stand the value of religious toleration and the first to implement itso far as the safety of the state would permit.114

The Cromwell who emerged from Vaughan's history was truly anational hero. Though a Puritan, a Dissenter, his policies wereneither narrowly sectarian nor selfishly ambitious. Rather, theywere intended to promote the greatness of the English nation. Thisimage of Cromwell, which would endure with minor variationsthroughout the remainder of the Victorian period, was the epitomeof almost half a century of Nonconformist scholarship. It combinedthe Dissenters' traditional view of the Puritans as defenders ofpolitical and religious liberty, expressed in the early works ofGodwin, Forster and Vaughan, along with Carlyle's conviction thatCromwell's Puritanism was sincere, his intentions virtuous, and hisaccomplishments heroic. Once Carlyle had shown how Cromwell -previously controversial and troublesome because of his allegedambition, hypocrisy and apostasy - could be vindicated, theDissenters were able to concentrate in one colossal figure fromthe past all that they stood for. The story of Cromwell's progressfrom Puritan gentleman to Lord Protector gave them an inspiringexample of political conduct as well as a powerful affirmation of theconstructive role that Dissent had played, and would continue toplay, in the making of modern England.

114 Ibid., 3: 397-427.

CHAPTER 4

Samuel Rawson Gardiner and thesearch for national consensus

In an essay on Macaulay, Lytton Strachey once identified those"qualities" that he thought essential for the successful historian: "acapacity for absorbing facts, a capacity for stating them, and a pointof view. The two latter," Strachey went on, "are connected, but notnecessarily inseparable. The late Professor Samuel Gardiner, forinstance, could absorb facts, and he could state them; but he had nopoint of view; and the result is that his book on the most excitingperiod of English history resembles nothing so much as a very largeheap of sawdust."1

When he aimed his sarcasm at Samuel Rawson Gardiner,Strachey was ridiculing one of the most important Englishhistorians of the nineteenth century, and the body of work that hereduced to "sawdust" was in fact the most sustained effort by anyVictorian to come to grips with the complexities of the Stuart past.From the mid-i85os, when he came to London, having just taken hisdegree at Oxford, until his debilitating stroke in 1901, Gardinerworked diligently to compile a narrative history of England fromthe accession of James I to the Restoration of the Stuarts. Althoughthis story had been told before, Gardiner sensed that it had notbeen told with candor, and to guarantee his own accuracy he basedhis account on a thorough reading of the evidence. Experience hadtaught him "that no quotations are sufficient to save an honestinquirer from the trouble of looking into the original documents."2

This extended use of manuscript sources, which enabled him toportray the past in greater detail than before, distinguished his

1 Lytton Strachey, Portraits in Miniature and Other Essays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1931),169-170.

2 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of fames I to the Disgrace ofChieffustice Coke, 1603-1616 (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1863), 1: vii.

139

140 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

histories from all others. Gardiner searched for source material notonly in the principal British repositories, but he scoured thearchives on the continent as well. Ransacking the libraries atSimancas, Venice, Brussels and Paris, he unearthed ambassadors'reports and other state papers to see what they would reveal aboutEngland's domestic and foreign affairs.3 The results of this researchhe presented in three major works: his History of England,4 Great CivilWar and Commonwealth and Protectorate. These works of narrativehistory, totaling eighteen volumes in the cabinet edition, wereundoubtedly Gardiner's masterpiece. But they were not the fullextent of his achievement. He was an author of textbooks, an editorof documents and a contributor to the Dictionary of NationalBiography, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and many of the majorVictorian periodicals.5 He was director of the Camden Society foralmost thirty years and editor ofthe English Historical Review for ten.He was among the first generation of professional historians and aprolific man of letters.

Strachey's dislike of the Victorians prevented him from seeingthat Gardiner's History of England did, in fact, have a point of view.6Formed in the 1860s and 1870s, as the rivalry between Church andDissent was reaching a new intensity, Gardiner's interpretation ofthe Stuart past was intended to moderate sectarian strife byapproaching the most divisive period in English history withdetachment and fairness. Gardiner's famed impartiality - hiswillingness to lay out the factual record without apparently takingsides - had, then, a specific political purpose. It was a Liberalresponse to one of the most troublesome issues of the age. Likeother Liberals, Gardiner believed that a modern democracy

3 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage: 1617-1623 (London: Hurstand Blackett, 1869), 1: vi-xi.

4 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of theCivil War, 1603-1642 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1883-1884). This ten-volumework is a slightly revised compilation of five earlier works: History of England from theAccession of James I to the Disgrace of Chief-Justice Coke, 1603-1616 (1863), Prince Charles andthe Spanish Marriage: 1617-1623 (1869), History of England under the Duke of Buckinghamand Charles / (1875), The Personal Government of Charles I (1877), and The Fall of the Monarchy ofCharles I (1882).

5 For an almost complete bibliography of Gardiner's published writings, see W. A. Shaw,^4Bibliography of the Historical Works of Dr. Creighton, Late Bishop of London, Dr. Stubbs, Late Bishopof Oxford, Dr. S. R. Gardiner, and the Late Lord Acton (London: Royal Historical Society, 1903).

6 This chapter will deal primarily with Gardiner's History of England, which contains hismature thinking on the origins of the Civil War. His work on the war itself, theCommonwealth and the Protectorate will be considered in the next chapter.

Gardiner and the search for consensus 141

functioned best when the nation was more or less undivided. Theunrestrained conflict between Anglicanism and Dissent, therefore,threatened to make national politics impossible. Gardiner hoped toremove the historical source of this rivalry by presenting an imageof the past which would demonstrate that modern England wasneither Anglican nor Puritan, but rather an amalgam of these twoantagonistic traditions. To the extent that he was successful, heoffered the Victorians a comprehensive interpretation of theseventeenth century that was broad enough to contain the nation'sPuritan as well as its Anglican past.

Unlike many of the eminent Victorians whose biographies aredocumented in great detail, Samuel Rawson Gardiner's liferemains relatively obscure. Except for a few particulars, we simplyknow very little about him. We do know, however, that for asignificant portion of his life he was an Irvingite. The story of hisreligious affiliations merits telling, not only because it has neverbeen told before, but because it sheds light on his work as ahistorian. The fact that Gardiner had ties to both Anglicanism andDissent may help to explain his decision to write a history thatattempted to promote understanding between England's con-forming and nonconforming traditions. As an Irvingite, Gardinerhad felt what it meant to be a Dissenter. He knew from personalexperience the religious compromises and professional sacrificesthat Dissenters were called upon to make in order to prosper inan Anglican society. But Gardiner's affinities extended beyondIrvingite Dissent. For the evidence suggests that during the finalthirty years of his life, the time when he wrote most of his majorworks, he was in fact a communicant in the Established Church.

Rawson Boddam Gardiner, the historian's father, was born in1788 at Whitchurch in Oxfordshire.7 He could claim descent fromboth Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton, and a desire to learn aboutthese ancestors accounts in part for his son's future interest in

7 According to his death certificate, available at the General Register Office, London,R. B. Gardiner was 75 years old when he died in 1863. His will, available at the PrincipalProbate Registry, London, states that he came originally from the parish of Whitchurch,Oxfordshire.

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the history of the Civil War.8 Rawson Gardiner was employed,presumably in the 1820s, in the East Indian civil service,9 and laterin the decade, perhaps after securing his fortune, he marriedMargaret Baring Gould and fathered two sons: Samuel Rawson,born in 1829 a t Ropley in Hampshire,10 and Charles Baring, born in1833.n Sometime in the early 1830s, Rawson Gardiner becameinvolved with the Irvingites, a millenarian sect gathered aroundEdward Irving, Henry Drummond and John Bate Cardale, and thisencounter was of great importance for the future of the Gardinerfamily, for Irvingism became their central concern for many years.

The career of Edward Irving stands as one of the most curiousexamples of evangelical religion in early nineteenth-centuryBritain. A clergyman of the Church of Scotland and an assistantfor several years to the famous Dr. Thomas Chalmers of Glasgow,Irving was called to London in 1822, where he began to minister tothe city's Scottish community. His dynamic and combative style ofpreaching immediately caused a sensation and at one time oranother Lords Aberdeen and Liverpool, Sir James Mackintosh,Zachary Macaulay, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlittwere all drawn to hear him. But as Irving's notoriety grew, histeachings became increasingly extravagant and eventually lapsedinto heresy. By 1826, he had become immersed in the study ofprophecy, and basing his reasoning on a reading of Daniel andRevelation, he predicted that the Second Advent would occuraround 1868. Several years later, he moved deeper into heterodoxyas he began to preach the human nature of Christ. The doctrine ofthe Atonement, he argued, only made sense if Christ, while onearth, had assumed man's fallible nature and been capable of sin.Such views were deemed heretical by the General Assembly of theChurch of Scotland and ultimately they cost Irving his living. Butthe most notable of his excesses occurred after 1831, when membersof his congregation began speaking in tongues, a phenomenonwhich he interpreted as the legitimate operation of the Holy Ghost

8 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, The Fall of the Monarchy of Charles I, 1637-1649 (London:Longmans, Green and Co., 1882), 1: vi.

9 The certificate for S. R. Gardiner's second marriage, in 1882, available at the GeneralRegister Office, London, lists his father's occupation as "East Indian Civil Service."

10 Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. "Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1829-1902)."11 A Biographical Index of Those Associated with the Lord's Work. Compiled by Seraphim

Newman-Norton. Papers of the Catholic Apostolic Church, Record Group No. 55. YaleDivinity Library, Archives and Manuscripts. Series 11, box 10, folder 68.

Gardiner and the search for consensus 143

on human souls. Taken as a whole, Irving's religion had anattractive immediacy: the gift of tongues indicated that remarkabletimes were at hand, Scriptural prophecy revealed the proximityof the Millennium, while his views on Christ's human naturesuggested that the Savior would appear not as a phantasm, but as aliving human being. To the Church of Scotland, however, thesenotions appeared at best disruptive, at worst unorthodox, and in1833 ^ e Presbytery of Annan, charging Irving with heresy, with-drew his ordination. Forced out of the Church of his choice, Irvingcontinued to preach before an independent congregation in Londonuntil his death in 1834.12

The Irvingite, or Catholic Apostolic Church as it became known,was founded on the teachings of Edward Irving, but due to hisuntimely death Irving himself played only a minor role in itsdevelopment. For the most part, the Church evolved under thedirection of two Englishmen: Henry Drummond, the scion of awealthy banking family, and John Bate Cardale, a London solicitor.Both Drummond and Cardale were deeply concerned withprophecy and other religious manifestations such as the gift oftongues, and they were drawn to Irving on account of his similarinterests. The organization which took shape under their guidancewas based on the belief that Christ's Second Coming was imminentand that a new Church, governed by twelve Apostles and character-ized by prophecy, miracles and other forms of divine intervention,should be established to await His arrival. To create such a Churchwas the task to which Drummond, Cardale and their followersapplied themselves. Cardale was "called" in 1832 as the firstrestored Apostle, Drummond was "called" in 1833 as the second,and the remaining ten Apostles were all appointed by 1835. Whilethe Apostles were certainly the most important officers in the newChurch, they were not the only ones. Each individual congregation

12 On Edward Irving, see: Mrs. Oliphant, The Life of Edward Irving, Minister of the NationalScotch Church, London (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1862). Thomas Carlyle, Reminiscences,ed. James Anthony Froude (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1882), 1: 70-338. EdwardMiller, The History and Doctrines of Irvingism, or of the So-Called Catholic and Apostolic Church(London: C. Kegan Paul and Co., 1878), 1: 1-106. Andrew Landale Drummond, EdwardIrving and His Circle, Including Some Consideration of the "Tongues" Movement in the Light ofModern Psychology (London: James Clarke and Co., 1937). Plato E. Shaw, The CatholicApostolic Church, Sometimes Called Irvingite: A Historical Study (Morningside Heights, NewYork: King's Crown Press, 1946), 7-59. Columba Graham Flegg, "Gathered Under Apostles":A Study of the Catholic Apostolic Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 46-63, 325-331.

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was governed by a complete ministry comprised of an Angel(roughly equivalent to an Anglican bishop), six Elders and sevenDeacons.13 The Irvingites were never a large group. Their firstchapel was built in 1832 on Drummond's Albury estate and shortlythereafter chapels were established in London, other parts ofEngland and, curiously enough, in Canada, the United States andGermany. By 1835 there were approximately twenty-four Irvingitechapels throughout England and by 1851, according to the religiouscensus of that year, this number had grown to thirty-two.14

Irvingism arose in England as a reaction to the incipientliberalism of the 1820s and 1830s. Profoundly conservative, EdwardIrving saw the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholicemancipation, the Reform Act and other liberal measures of thetime as disturbing proof that all true authority in Church and statehad broken down in the face of growing democracy.15 Dismayed bywhat he considered the atheism and anarchy of his age, herejected the idea of a democratic Church and hoped to restore tothat institution the authority, uniformity and obedience which hadprevailed in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.16

Believing that modern theology had removed the life fromChristianity, he hoped to revitalize it by urging a literal interpret-ation of the Scriptures. With this goal in mind, he insisted that thesacraments were real and not symbolic, that Christ had assumedman's fallen nature, that the Second Coming was imminent, andthat the Holy Ghost made itself known, in the present as in thepast, through prophecy, tongues, healings and miracles. Whencalled upon to defend these ideas, Irving referred not only tothe Bible, but to the original sixteenth-century Standards of theScottish Church.17

In some respects, Irvingism resembled the Oxford Movement

13 For the history and doctrines of the Irvingites, see: Miller, The History and Doctrines ofIrvingism. Shaw, The Catholic Apostolic Church. Flegg, "Gathered Under Apostles".

14 Annals: The Lord's Work in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Compiled fromVarious Sources by H. B. Copinger. Papers of the Catholic Apostolic Church, RecordGroup No. 55. Yale Divinity Library, Archives and Manuscripts. Series n, box 9, folder 64,pages 28, 55, 92.

15 Oliphant, Life of Irving, 1: 258, 260, 262, 269-270, 283, 316-318, 341, 347, 376-384. For hisfollowers' similar fears, see their "Great Testimony . . . " (1837), reprinted in Miller, TheHistory and Doctrines of Irvingism, 1: 347-360.

16 Oliphant, Life of Irving, 1: 286, 376-384.17 The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, ed. G. Carlyle (London: Alexander Strahan, 1866),

1: 600-610, 615-618.

Gardiner and the search for consensus 145

since both arose in response to the intellectual and politicalliberalism of the early nineteenth century and since both hopedto infuse new life into Christianity by drawing on an earliersacramentalism. The Irvingite clergy began in the 1840s to wearvestments of greater complexity as they presided over an increas-ingly elaborate ritual. The alb, girdle, stole, chasuble, cope andsurplice were introduced in 1842, while the rochet and mozzettawere added several years later. Consecrated oil entered the servicein 1846, lights and incense in 1852.18 These developments occurredalmost exactly as the first signs of ritualism were appearing in theAnglican Church, suggesting a similar impulse behind bothIrvingism and the Oxford Movement. Indeed, one may haveborrowed from the other. The Irvingites acknowledged that theaims of the Tractarians were similar to their own, but complainedthat in the long run the Oxford Movement had been too radical andhad weakened the Church which it had set out to strengthen.19

Rawson Boddam Gardiner became involved with Irvingismalmost from its inception. In 1834 he was ordained an Elder in theChurch at Southampton, just one month after it had beenorganized, in 1836 he was made an Evangelist to the Nations, and in1837 he was consecrated Angel of the Church in Everton andLymington.20 His two sons were likewise drawn to the movement,but whereas Charles Baring was firmly attached to the new faith,becoming Angel of Brighton in 1882,21 Samuel Rawson's relation-ship to Irvingism was somewhat more ambivalent. He entered theIrvingite Church in 1851 and was ordained a Deacon Evangelist in1852.22 Deacons were elected by the members of their congregationand were ordained by an Apostle. They assisted with the sacra-ments, managed the financial affairs of the congregation, andperformed pastoral duties. In addition to these responsibilities, aDeacon Evangelist was expected to encourage conversions. In 1853

18 Annals, 77, 81, 96.19 Henry Drummond, Substance of Lectures Delivered in the Churches (London: Thomas

Bosworth , 1847), 78.20 A n n a l s , 43 , 67, 70. Biographical index .21 Biographical Index.22 The Biographical Index compiled by Newman-Norton has no entry on Samuel Rawson

Gardiner, presumably because he eventually left the Church. I obtained the dates forGardiner's admission into the Irvingite Church, for his ordination as Deacon, and for his"lapsed" standing during an interview on 4 February 1983, with the Secretary to theTrustees of the Catholic Apostolic Church.

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the Gardiner family moved to London from Southampton, wherethey had been living since the 1840s,23 and in that same year theIrvingites built their great neo-Gothic church on a corner of GordonSquare. Sometime in 1854, Samuel Rawson was "blessed" there as aDeacon. Two years later, in 1856, he married Edward Irving'syoungest daughter, Isabella,24 and translated an Irvingite manualentitled Christian Family Life.25 Written by the German H. W. J.Thiersch, the tract was devoted in large part to the responsibilitiesof marriage.26

If Gardiner seemed by the mid-i85os comfortably ensconced inthe Irvingite faith, he was not to remain so for long. According toSir Charles Firth, one of Gardiner's closest associates during hislater years, he ceased to be a Deacon in 1866,27 and the churchregisters declared him "lapsed" in 1872. There is no record of hisreasons for quitting the sect, but in retrospect it seems hardlyremarkable that he did so. The death of his father in 1863 followedby the failure of Irving's prophecy may have loosened the ties thatbound Gardiner to the new religion. Because of its apocalypticnature, Irvingism was most suited to, and would have had itsgreatest appeal in times of social and political unrest such as the1820s and 1830s. Gardiner, however, joined the sect in the 1850s atthe height of Victorian prosperity and stability, and it must havebeen difficult, if not in his case impossible, to maintain the apoca-lyptic vision. Gardiner's history, not surprisingly, was characterizedby a confidence in the perfection of English institutions that seems

23 Post Office Directories for Southampton and London.24 The marriage certificate is available at the General Register Office, London.25 Nicholas Tyacke, "An Unnoticed Work by Samuel Rawson Gardiner," Bulletin of the

Institute of Historical Research, 47 ( N o v e m b e r , 1974): 244-245.26 One of Samuel Rawson Gardiner's cousins, the novelist Sabine Baring Gould, made the

following observation on the Gardiner family's involvement with Irvingism: "My AuntMargaret, born in 1803, was the beauty of the family, with the loveliest complexionimaginable. She had a disappointment in early life, and in pique accepted RawsonBodham [sic] Gardiner, one of the ugliest men Nature ever turned out, and unamiable toboot. He took up with Irvingism, and was, I believe, promoted to be an angel. Certainlyhe was a libel on angelic beauty as dreamed of by painters and poets. She, gentle, sweet,and not having received any definite Church teaching complied with her husband'sreligious vagaries. She died in 1853. When on her death-bed, the Irvingites tried toperform a miracle and cure her. One of the soi-disant Apostles, Drummond, I believe, wassummoned to her and in an authoritative tone bade her rise up and walk. The poorcreature did rise from her bed, staggered round the room, sank on her bed again, andinstantly expired." Sabine Baring Gould, Early Reminiscences, 1834-1864 (London: JohnLane, the Bodley Head, 1923), no.

27 DNB, s.v. "Gardiner, Samuel Rawson."

Gardiner and the search for consensus 147

hardly consonant with a belief that everything was soon to perish.As he began to study history, and in particular the history ofEngland during the Civil War, he may have seen, if he did not knowit already, that the rise and fall of millenarian religions was aperiodic occurrence attributable to upheavals in the social ordermore than to divine providence. Furthermore, Irvingism was basedon a literal interpretation of the Scriptures which was incompatiblewith the historical method. As Gardiner refined his technique andbegan to realize that documents must be "read in the spirit of thetimes in which they were drawn up,"28 the inadequacy of a literalapproach to the Bible must have become apparent. Indeed, thefifteen years or so which Gardiner spent in the Irvingite Churchmay have been a time of painful awakening as he came to recognizethat the implications of his work and method as a historian were atodds with the religious beliefs of his family.

The most compelling motive, however, for Gardiner's decisionto leave the Irvingites may well have been that his religiousnonconformity was beginning to stand in the way of his career as ahistorian. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, teaching appointmentsat the major universities were still largely restricted to Anglicansand the fact that Gardiner left the Irvingites in order to resume hisconnection with the Established Church suggests that he may havedone so for professional reasons. In 1871, he applied for the positionof lecturer in modern history at King's College, London, and hisletter of application, without mentioning his Irvingite past, stressedhis newly acquired Anglican credentials: "I am 42 years of age,"Gardiner declared, "and a member of the Church of England."Along with his other application materials, Gardiner enclosed atestimonial in which Arthur Richard Godson, the Anglican Vicarof All Saints, Gordon Square, attested that he had "known Mr.Gardiner for several years as a member of the Congregation of AllSaints Church, and as a regular Communicant there."29 Gardiner'sbid for the job was successful and he held the position at King's fora number of years. Whether Gardiner left the Irvingites out ofgenuine conviction - and there is no evidence that he ever resumed

28 S a m u e l R a w s o n G a r d i n e r , History of England from the Accession off antes I to the Outbreak of theCivil War, 1603-1642, new edition (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1895), 2: 78.

29 Samuel Rawson Gardiner to the Council of King's College (21 November 1871), Gardinerpapers, King's College, University of London, KA/1C/G48.

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his connection with them — or whether he did so simply to advancehis career may well remain a mystery. But his move back intoconformity with the Established Church made it possible for him topursue opportunities which otherwise would have been closed tohim.

Gardiner never mentioned, in either letters or diaries, whatIrvingism meant to him, and it is impossible, therefore, to say withcertainty what influence his religion might have had on his work asa historian. But there can be little doubt that such an influence did,in fact, exist. Gardiner conceived and began to research his historyin the mid-i85os, at exactly the moment when he was most deeplyinvolved with the Irvingites, but he wrote most of its volumes afterhe had resumed his connection with the Church of England. Thecomplexities of his religious affiliations, it seems fair to say, wouldhave provided him with a unique perspective on England'sseventeenth-century past.

Gardiner certainly knew what it meant to be a Dissenter, and theobstacles he faced as a non-Anglican, particularly in education,possibly had the greatest effect on his thinking about religion,politics and toleration. He began to attend Winchester College in1841, and six years later, in 1847, he matriculated at Christ Church,Oxford. Since admission to the university was restricted at this timeto Anglicans, Gardiner must have felt sufficiently at ease in theChurch of England to subscribe to its Thirty-Nine Articles, thoughit seems doubtful that he ever seriously intended a career in theChurch. Little is known about his university years except that in1851 he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in the school of literaehumaniores, and that in 1850, while still an undergraduate, he wasgranted a studentship. The award carried with it a small stipendand did not require residence at the university. It could be held forlife providing the student did not marry and providing he enteredorders within a reasonable time, in some cases up to six or sevenyears. When Gardiner joined the Irvingites in 1851, making it clearthat he would not become a clergyman in the Church of England,he removed his name from the books at Christ Church and thecollege withdrew the grant.30 Since Gardiner never mentioned this

30 DNB, s.v. "Gardiner, Samuel Rawson." E. G. W. Bill and J. F. A. Mason, Christ Church andReform, 1850-1867 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 11—13,17—20. Samuel Rawson Gardinerto William Anson (19 November 1884), Anson papers, All Souls College, Oxford.

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act of religious discrimination, it is difficult to assess its impact onhim. In a sense, his loss was small; the stipend was not large and theposition brought with it little power either at Christ Church orelsewhere. And yet it can hardly be coincidental that shortly after-ward he set to work on a history of England in which the growth oftoleration was a principal theme. Gardiner's latitudinarian senti-ments, expressed in everything he wrote, suggest that he knew theevils of intolerance at first hand.

And yet it would be misleading to regard Gardiner as aNonconformist whose religious dissent led him to write a history ofthe Civil War from a distinctly Puritan point of view. In the firstplace, Irvingism was rather exceptional as a form of Dissent. Unlikemany Dissenters, whose denominational origins lay in the religiousstruggles of the seventeenth century, the Irvingites traced theirbeginnings to certain political and intellectual developmentsunique to the early nineteenth century. Unlike a Baptist or aCongregationalist, an Irvingite, on the basis of his religion, wouldhave felt no particular historical allegiance to either party in theCivil War. In the second place, Gardiner was not simply aNonconformist since he had ties with the Church of England bothbefore he joined the Irvingites and after he left the sect. Many ofthe Irvingites never considered themselves Dissenters at all, andsome remained members of the Established Church. Gardiner'sfather, for one, was comfortable enough with Anglicanism to havesent his son to Winchester and Christ Church where he wouldhave acquired an Anglican education. This suggests that until 1851,when Gardiner took his degree at Oxford and was forced by theinflexibility of the Establishment to choose between Anglicanismor Irvingism, neither he nor his father found the two faithsincompatible. Rather than viewing Gardiner as a Dissentinghistorian who wrote a Nonconformist history of the Civil War, wemight just as easily regard him as an Anglican historian, frustratedand angered at the narrowness of the Establishment, who wrote ahistory of the seventeenth century designed to promote tolerationfor Dissenting sects and the widest possible comprehension withinthe Church.

Finally, Gardiner's impartiality, his ability to regard both Puritanand Churchman with equal sympathy, may have owed something tothe peculiarities of his religious experience. By the time he becameactively involved in Irvingism, its practices had become quite

150 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

ritualistic. Gardiner's ability to appreciate the Laudian movementin the Stuart Church, which he termed an appeal to the senses, mayhave derived in part from his own exposure to ritual. Similarly, themillenarian aspects of Irvingism may have enabled Gardiner torespect the Puritans and to overcome the charge of fanaticism thatwas so often leveled against them. Because of his religion, then,Gardiner understood both sides in the struggle between Dissentand the Established Church and was able to evaluate both of them,in the past and the present, with a greater degree of dispassion.

11

Writing in 1885 to William Anson, Warden of All Souls College,Gardiner noted with amusement that a Conservative Committeehad procured him a vote for the borough of Oxford in the comingelection. It was "generous of them," he remarked, to have taken"so much care of a benighted Liberal."31 The evidence concerningGardiner's politics, scattered throughout his few extant letters,numerous short articles and reviews, is at best incomplete andimpressionistic. But when gathered together, it presents a clearpicture, providing substance to his description of himself as a"benighted Liberal." From the Midlothian campaign through thecrises over Irish Home Rule, the expansion of empire and the BoerWar, Gardiner took a position that was consistently Gladstonian. Inretrospect, this is hardly surprising. Gladstone, after all, hadrepresented Oxford during Gardiner's years at Christ Church andwas largely responsible for drafting the bill that would abolishreligious tests for undergraduates. Though the Oxford UniversityAct would not affect Gardiner in any tangible way - he had alreadytaken his bachelor's degree by the time it had passed and it did notalter the Anglican exclusiveness of fellowships - he would havewelcomed it as the first step toward ending religious discriminationin the university.

The first general election on which Gardiner's position becomesclear was the contest in 1880 between Gladstone and Disraeli. Theelection was fought largely on foreign policy as Gladstone,beginning with the Bulgarian agitation in 1876 and continuing

31 Samuel Rawson Gardiner to William Anson (9 October 1885), Anson papers, All SoulsCollege, Oxford.

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through the Midlothian campaigns of 1879 and 1880, hammeredaway relentlessly at Disraeli's misguided policy. It was immoral,Gladstone declared, dangerously aggressive, and threatened todisrupt the peace of Europe by unnecessarily antagonizing thecontinental powers while over-extending Britain's resources.Like Gladstone, Gardiner disliked foreign initiatives that weremotivated not by a moral imperative, but by the desire to flatternational pride through the senseless acquisition of territory. Theevidence for Gardiner's position is indirect and found in hiscontribution to the article on English history in the EncyclopaediaBritannica, where he described the elder Pitt's policy during theSeven Years War in evocative terms:The war seems to be a mere struggle for territory. There is no feeling ineither Pitt or Frederick, such as there was in the men who contended halfa century later against Napoleon, that they were fighting the battles of thecivilized world. There is something repulsive as well in the enthusiasticnationality of Pitt . . . Pitt's sole object was to exalt England to a positionin which she might fear no rival, and might scarcely look upon a second.

Gardiner's assessment of Pitt could very well have contained aveiled criticism of Disraeli:it was his love of war, not his skill in carrying it on, which was really inquestion. He would be satisfied with nothing short of the absolute ruinof France. He would have given England that dangerous position ofsupremacy which was gained for France by Lewis XIV in the 17th century,and by Napoleon in the 19th century. He would have made his country stillmore haughty and arrogant than it was, till other nations rose against it,as they have three times risen against France, rather than submit to theintolerable yoke. It was a happy thing for England that peace was signed.32

Whether Gardiner intended these observations, made in 1878 asDisraeli was threatening war with Russia in order to assertEngland's presence in the Near East, as a critique of Beaconsfield-ism may never be known. But it seems unlikely that someone whohad chastised Pitt for his chauvinism and arrogance would havewelcomed Disraeli's forward policy in the 1870s.

Gardiner's position on the rights of emerging nations revealseven more clearly the ground he shared with Gladstone at the timeof Midlothian. Gardiner is, perhaps, best described as a liberal

32 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "England, History," Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth edition,American reprint (Philadelphia: J. M. Stoddart and Co., 1875-1890), 8: 319.

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nationalist who believed in the right of oppressed nations tocoalesce as states, even when statehood was achieved throughrevolution. Like other Liberals, Gardiner preferred change whenit occurred gradually by means of a Burkean compromise withtradition. But he acknowledged that in some circumstances, such asthose found in France in 1789, revolution was the only alternativebecause "the historical method of gradual progress was impossiblewhere institutions had become so utterly bad."33 In cases whererevolution was the expression of a burgeoning nationalism, as in theBalkans at the time he was writing, Gardiner felt that Britainshould adopt an attitude of restraint which would allow emergingnations to achieve their goals. To justify this position, Gardiner,much like Gladstone, emphasized the liberal side of British foreignpolicy which stretched from the younger Pitt through Canning,Palmerston and Russell, and was predicated on principles ofnoninterference. The essence of Pitt's and Canning's policy was nota dread of revolution, as was commonly thought, but rather anopposition to the tendency of aggressive nations to impose their willon weaker neighbors. "Canning," Gardiner explained, " . . . was thepupil of Pitt, not of Burke, and the element which Pitt brought withhim was resistance to the [French] Revolution as interfering withother nations rather than . . . resistance to it as introducing newforms of government. It was this view which Canning inherited.When he saw the Holy Alliance interfering with the rights ofnations to settle their internal government in their own way, heset himself against the Holy Alliance just as he had set himselfagainst the Revolutionary propaganda and the aggressive militarydespotism of Napoleon."34 At the time of Italian unification,Palmerston and Russell extended Canning's liberal policy whenthey condoned revolution in Italy in order to help found an Italianstate.35

Writing in 1880, the year of Gladstone's second Midlothiancampaign, Gardiner noted that the principles behind Canning'spolicy still spoke directly to contemporary events: "The importanceof this side of Canning's activity is the greater because it connectsitself with all that is distinctive in those European international

33 Ibid. , 8: 323.34 S a m u e l R a w s o n G a r d i n e r , "Modern His tory ," Contemporary Review, 37 (June, 1880): 1057.35 Ibid. , 1058.

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relations of the present day."36 He was plainly alluding here tothe problems posed by the growth of militant nationalism in theBalkans. As an advocate of a liberal foreign policy, Gardiner wouldhave rejected Disraeli's policy of backing the Ottoman empire inorder to maintain Britain's interests in the Near East whileextinguishing the revolutionary conflagration in the Balkans.Instead, he would have found congenial Gladstone's conviction thatthe Balkan insurrections were a legitimate attempt of oppressednationalities to achieve their independence from the domination ofthe Turks. Indeed, during his first Midlothian campaign, Gladstonehad portrayed himself as the representative of the same liberaltradition in foreign policy that Gardiner would endorse in 1880,associating it, as Gardiner would, with the names of Canning,Palmerston and Russell.37

Gardiner's decision to back Gladstone on Home Rule is perhapsthe most telling indication of his political loyalties since no issuewas more divisive in the 1880s and 1890s than Ireland. Like otherLiberals, Gardiner developed his position gradually. Using a reviewof Justin McCarthy's History of Our Own Times in 1880 as an oppor-tunity to discuss Home Rule, Gardiner expressed reservationsabout the measure. He acknowledged that the English had notalways treated Ireland well, pointing out that they suffered from a"defect of imagination" which prevented them from understandingtheir Irish subjects. But he also believed that they were gettingbetter at governing Ireland because they were becoming moresympathetic to Irish needs, and he referred to the Irish legislationenacted during Gladstone's first government as evidence of thisimprovement. More important, he thought that the English stillhad a crucial role to play in Ireland since only an outside authoritycould settle the fierce conflict between competing parties. "Theadvocates of Home Rule," Gardiner wrote, "assert that Ireland canbest determine its own legislation because it best knows its owngrievances. May it not be asked in return whether there are notdivisions in Ireland which call for a disinterested mediator to healthem? Would the Irish landlords be likely to give to the tenant-farmers their due? Would the Irish tenant farmers be likely to giveto the landlords their due? May it not turn out that the Parliamentof the United Kingdom will be inclined to deal more fairly with both

36 Ibid., 1057. 37 See for example The Times, 26 November 1879, 10.

154 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

parties than any Irish Parliament, representing an overwhelmingmajority on one side, would be likely to do?"38

Gardiner's overriding concern, it seems, was to preserve theunion of England and Ireland, and he was uncertain at the timewhether Home Rule was the best way to achieve that end. Ratherthan establish two separate Parliaments, Gardiner called on hiscountrymen to govern Ireland conscientiously, something he feltwould be done better if they would only view objectively the historyof their dealings in Ireland. To this end, Gardiner used his reviewsof books about seventeenth-century Ireland to emphasize theinterpretation of the Anglo-Irish past that he had been developingin his histories since the 1860s. No matter how well intentioned theEnglish might have been, their policies had failed in Irelandprecisely because they had not taken into account the rights andneeds of the Irish. "It must be acknowledged," Gardiner observed,reviewing a calendar of state papers for the Academy in 1877, "thatno English Governor of Ireland ever fully appreciated the highestdifficulties of his task. He was so convinced that English society wasbetter than Irish society, so ready to imagine that Irishmen mightbe turned into Englishmen by the application of the proper meansof compulsion, that it was only at rare intervals that facts wouldexercise some influence over him . . . He was, therefore, always aptto fall back upon the old ways, and to treat Irish habits and Irishfeelings with the bitterest contempt; at the same time that hisEnglish habit of respecting law embarked him in the pursuit of atechnical legality which, in the eyes of those who suffered from it,went far to heighten the injustice which it clothed."39

This tendency to criticize his countrymen for their insensitivitywas reflected in Gardiner's treatment of the Anglo-Irish past inthose volumes of his History published during the years leading upto the Home Rule crisis. While arguing that the English had alwaysintended to benefit Ireland, he readily acknowledged that theyhad failed because they had never adequately understood the Irish

38 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Justin McCarthy's History of Our Own Times, Academy,18 (9 October 1880): 251-252.

39 S a m u e l R a w s o n Gard iner , R e v i e w o f Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, Academy, 12(15 September 1877): 261. See also Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Calendar of StatePapers, Ireland, Academy, 7 (26 June 1875): 654-655, Review of Calendar of State Papers, Ireland,Academy, 19 (14 May 1881): 347, Review of Hickson's Ireland in the Seventeenth Century,Academy, 26 (26July 1884): 53.

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nor taken their needs into account. In the Personal Government ofCharles I, written between 1875 and 1877, Gardiner examinedWentworth's problematic tenure as Lord Deputy which laid thegroundwork for the Irish insurrection of 1641. Wentworth'sintentions, Gardiner pointed out, were laudable. He had set out toraise Ireland to a "higher level of civilization." By imposing the lawsand religion of England on the recalcitrant Irish and by plantingamong them a Protestant and English population, which he hopedwould provide a model worthy of emulation, Wentworth planned totransform Ireland into a prosperous nation loyal to its Englishbenefactor. But Gardiner further admitted that Wentworth's planswere doomed from the start because they ignored the tenacity withwhich a nation "clings to its ancestral habits and modes ofthought."40 The Lord Deputy had no alternative but to coerce theIrish into accepting an alien faith and unfamiliar laws, which inthe end generated the discontent expressed in the uprising of 1641.The lessons which Gardiner drew from this episode were clearlyaimed at his own century: Wentworth had failed, Gardinerconcluded, because he had ignored all "popular feeling," andinstead of "guiding" the Irish, he had "driven" them against theirwill.41

By 1885, despite his earlier reservations, Gardiner had becomean advocate of Home Rule. Late that year, Gladstone announcedhis own conversion to Home Rule, and in 1886 he submitted toParliament the bill that would ultimately split his party, markinga watershed in Victorian politics. Unlike many Liberals whoabandoned their leader over his Irish policies, Gardiner remained aGladstonian throughout the crisis. His concern, in 1886 as in 1880,was how best to strengthen the union of the two nations, only nowhe had come to see that a measure of Home Rule was necessary inorder to appease Irish nationalism. As he explained to James Bryce,"the modern tendency to amalgamation has only been renderedpossible by the previous assertion of the rights of nationality."42

Gardiner's plan was to establish two national Parliaments over

40 S a m u e l Rawson Gardiner , The Personal Government of Charles I: A History of England from theAssassination of the Duke of Buckingham to the Declaration of the Judges on Ship-Money, 1628-1637(London: L o n g m a n s , G r e e n and Co. , 1877), 2: 122, 136, 146.

41 Ibid., 2: 158-159.42 S a m u e l Rawson Gardiner to J a m e s Bryce (5 M a y 1886), M S . Bryce, UB 26, Bodle ian

Library, Oxford .

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which a joint committee would preside. This joint committee, heexplained, "would be offensive to nobody" and might eventuallyassume the responsibilities of a federal government.43 Looking backon the crisis in 1889, Gardiner clarified his position, and expresseda willingness to grant a similar autonomy to Scotland and Wales aswell. "I hold now," he wrote to E. A. Freeman, "as I held in 1885 thatIrish Home Rule necessitates English, Scottish, and perhaps WelshHome Rule very speedily after it is granted . . . I have alwaysthought that there must be three or four Parliaments with a bigunited Parliament above them. If I had been an M.P. in 1886 Ishould have voted for the second reading of Gladstone's Billbecause I had confidence in the common sense of Englishmen andIrishmen to add what was wanting, and I did not think men's mindswere prepared to grasp the idea of federalism without considerabledelay."44

Gladstone's decision to stand or fall on the issue of Home Rule in1886 had profound consequences for the course of Victorianpolitics. It dealt a nearly fatal blow to the Liberal party as manyGladstonians who feared its consequences now deserted theirleader, preparing the way for a prolonged period of Conservativegovernment. Gardiner remained an advocate of Home Rule evenafter Gladstone's defeat in 1886, a decision he shared with otheruniversity trained liberals such as James Bryce, E. A. Freeman andJohn Morley. In 1887, for example, Gardiner subscribed tothe Oxford University Home Rule League, established by theShakespeare scholar E. K. Chambers, and became one ofthe organization's vice presidents.45 The evidence also suggests thatwhen Gladstone returned to office in 1892 and carried his secondHome Rule Bill through the Commons, Gardiner gave the measurehis backing.46 The decision of the Lords to reject the Bill by anoverwhelming majority provoked Gladstone, in his final speechbefore Parliament, to chastise the peers for defying the nation'srepresentatives. Gardiner, who had once written that "it is

43 Ibid.44 S a m u e l R a w s o n Gardiner to E. A. F r e e m a n (21 O c t o b e r 1889), M S . Bryce, UB 26, Bodle ian

Library, Oxford .45 S a m u e l R a w s o n Gardiner to the Rev. E. K. C h a m b e r s (19 D e c e m b e r 1887), M S . Autogr .

e. 10, fols. 120-121, Bod le ian Library, Oxford.46 S a m u e l R a w s o n Gardiner to J a m e s Bryce (24 J u n e 1892), M S . Bryce 9, fols. 333-334,

B o d l e i a n Library, Oxford . [Samuel Rawson G a r d i n e r ] , "New Light on the C o m m o n -w e a l t h , " The Speaker, 11 (27 April 1895): 469.

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essential to the permanence of an Upper House that it should beunable to set at defiance the will of the nation expressed by itsrepresentatives," would no doubt have seconded Gladstone'sparting harangue.47

As he reflected on the Irish question in both its past and presentaspects, Gardiner noted its connection to other problems posed bythe expansion of the Victorian empire. In particular, the difficultiesthat England had confronted in Ireland during the seventeenthcentury resembled closely those it was currently facing in itsoverseas possessions. "Many years ago," he recalled in 1875, "whenI was attempting to understand the disturbances preceding thecolonisation of Ulster, I found the greatest help in a ParliamentaryBlue Book relating to certain troubles by which the nativepopulation of New Zealand was at that time agitated, while atthe present day it is difficult to read about the flight of Tyrone with-out thinking of that unwieldy name which even SouthAfricans do not always succeed in pronouncing without a slip -Langalibalele." Gardiner concluded that the Anglo-Irish past"ought to be studied by all who wish to know what light history hasto throw on the relations between an English government andtribes in a lower stage of civilisation." The lessons he drew weresuitably Gladstonian: peace in the empire could only be achievedif the rights of the colonized, particularly their right to thepossession of their lands, took precedence over the needs of thecolonists. The disturbances that preceded the plantation of Ulsterin the early seventeenth century and the Maori wars of the 1860s,Gardiner discovered, had similar causes. In both instances, Englishgovernors had inadvertently created disorder by disregardingnative customs and establishing an alien legal system based onEnglish principles. In Ireland, these reforms were intended tobreak the independence of the native chiefs, but turned theminto malcontents instead. Tyrone and Langalibalele were localchiefs, one Irish, the other African, who had fled their homelandsbecause they would rather suffer exile than submit to foreigndomination.48

Gardiner's outlook on imperial issues remained Gladstonian

47 S a m u e l R a w s o n G a r d i n e r , " E n g l a n d , H i s tory ," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8: 317.48 S a m u e l R a w s o n G a r d i n e r , R e v i e w o f Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, Academy, 7 (26 J u n e

1875): 654. G a r d i n e r , History of England, 1: 358-417 .

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throughout the troubled 1890s. Writing to James Bryce in 1896, asKitchener began his advance down the Nile into the Sudan, andafter the Jameson Raid had ended in a fiasco earlier in the year,Gardiner pronounced Lord Salisbury's foreign policy "miserable."49

As British relations with the Boer Republics deteriorated at the endof the century and the prospect of a South African war loomedlarge, Gardiner continued to criticize the Conservatives' imperialpolicy. He confided to Bryce, just days before the outbreak of war in1899, that he had "long felt that the [Uitlanders'] demand forthe franchise was a mistake — an interference carrying with it themaximum of irritation with the least possible advantage." Ratherthan pushing the franchise issue to the point of war, asChamberlain was intent on doing, Gardiner proposed a plan that heassociated in part with John Morley. The position of the Uitlandersin the Transvaal, he suggested, was analogous to the position of theIrish in the United Kingdom, and consequently granting them adegree of local self-government, or "Home-rule" as he put it, mightprovide a peaceful solution to the problem. Though he doubtedwhether the arrangement would be acceptable to all parties, itwould at least be a "policy which will satisfy our consciences," adistinctly Gladstonian consideration.50

One important area where Gladstone and Gardiner partedcompany was the Church of England. At issue was the PublicWorship Regulation Act. Gardiner's comments on the measure,which comprise just about his only published observations on theVictorian Church, appeared in his review of Dean Hook's biographyof Archbishop Laud. The initiative for the Public Worship Act,which was designed to eliminate ritualism in the Church, had comefrom Archbishop Tait with the backing of the Queen. Tait had triedat first to use the courts in order to curb ritualism, but when theritualist clergy defied the legal judgments against them, Taitturned to legislation. The Public Worship Act was an attempt toarm the Church with the means to force recalcitrant clergymento comply with the laws governing worship. Whereas Gladstoneopposed the bill because he thought it infringed on religious

49 Samuel Rawson Gardiner to James Bryce (30 May 1896), MS. Bryce, UB 21, BodleianLibrary, Oxford.

50 Samuel Rawson Gardiner to James Bryce (8 October 1899), MS. Bryce, UB 7, BodleianLibrary, Oxford.

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freedom within the Church, other Liberals supported it because,being Erastians, they felt the legislature had the right to regulatepublic worship to conform to the wishes of the nation.51 In hisbiography of Laud, Dean Hook, a Tractarian fellow traveler, hadblasted Tait, accusing him of acting more despotically than Laud.Where Laud had used his authority to enforce existing laws, Taithad disregarded those laws already in existence and hadcompromised the independence of the Church by calling onParliament to legislate for it. Gardiner, in his review, acceptedHook's challenge and defended the authors of the Public WorshipAct, pointing out that, unlike Laud, they had neither defiedpopular sentiment nor infringed on the religious freedom of theiradversaries:Is there any parallel to be drawn between his [Laud's] mode of dealingwith Church questions and that which was accepted by the House ofCommons in 1874? No candid person can fail to trace a resemblancereaching very deeply between Laud and the authors of recent legislation,especially those who were lawyers by profession. In both was a profoundrespect for the authority of the law; in both was a contemptuous dislike ofthe irregular manifestations of religious sentiment; in both was a desire toestablish uniformity of ritual with a corresponding want of zeal for unityof doctrine. But it is seldom that comparisons run on all fours, and themain difference consists in this - that Laud became unpopular byappealing against use and wont to the unrepealed law, while his modernsuccessors, having the legislative power in their hands, were able toproduce a new law, the operation of which was intended to favour thepopular use and wont. Nor must the great distinction between the seven-teenth and the nineteenth centuries be left out of sight because DeanHook deliberately closes his eyes to its existence. When Laud forbade theclergy to conduct the worship of their congregations according to a certainform of ritual, he forbade them to officiate anywhere within the King'sdominions. At present the enforcement of the law leaves them perfectlyfree ta continue any practices they please outside the limits of theEstablished Church.52

51 For the controversy over ritualism, see: P. T. Marsh, The Victorian Church in Decline:Archbishop Tait and the Church of England, 1868-1882 (Pittsburgh: University of PittsburghPress, 1969), in—134,158-192. G. I. T. Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, i86gto ig2i (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 4-7, 70-78. J. P. Parry, Democracy and Religion:Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867-1875 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986),413-417.

52 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Hook's Lives of the Archbishops, Academy, 8(6 November 1875): 467.

160 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

In defending the Public Worship Act, Gardiner parted companywith Gladstone. Where Gardiner spoke as a liberal Anglican whowanted the Establishment to appeal to the largest number ofEnglish men and women possible by removing practices that themajority found offensive, Gladstone's High Church sympathies ledhim to defend those practices on the grounds that they occupied alegitimate place within the Anglican Church. And where Gardinerspoke as an Erastian who believed that Parliament, representingthe nation, had the right to regulate the practices of the Establish-ment, Gladstone upheld the spiritual independence of the Church.

Behind Gardiner's politics lay a liberal nationalism. His supportfor the emerging nations in the Balkans, his conviction that Irish,Welsh and Scottish nationalism deserved consideration within thepolitical arrangement of the United Kingdom, his acknowledgmentthat sensitivity toward the rights and customs of subject peopleswas one of Britain's paramount responsibilities as an imperialpower all reflect his confidence that nations were legitimatepolitical entities and that nations other than his own meritedrespect. His belief that English institutions, such as the EstablishedChurch and the universities, should be broadly based withoutrestrictions so as to appeal to the largest section of the populationreflects further his Liberal conviction that the nation as a whole,rather than special interests defined by class or religion, was theproper foundation of political life. Indeed, what Gardiner thoughtdistinguished Liberalism, as it had emerged in England after theReform Act of 1832, from other political creeds was precisely thisawareness that the purpose of government was to achieve the goodof the entire nation. "There is," he observed about early Victorianpolitics, "no mistaking the tendency of this great era of legislationunder the influence of the reform by which the balance of powerhad swayed over to the middle classes by 1832. The idea which wassteadily making its way was the idea of testing all questions by theinterest of the nation as a whole, and of disregarding in comparisonthe special interests of particular classes."53

What had enabled statesmen finally to go beyond class orsectarian loyalties was the development of political and economicscience. Where other politicians had acted according to narrowlydefined interests, Liberals appealed to those objective laws of social

53 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "England, History," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8: 328.

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development that were the principal concern of the science ofpolitical economy. The younger Pitt, Gardiner concluded, was thefirst Liberal because he was the first statesman to appreciatethe practical significance of Adam Smith's work. His ministry of1784 - until, that is, the French Revolution threw English politicsinto disarray - was the first Liberal administration because itsubstituted a knowledge of "political and economic science for theinfluence of wealth and station." This early Liberalism continued inthe free trade principles of Robert Peel and reached its finaldevelopment - or so we can infer from the brief sketch of modernBritish history that Gardiner wrote for the Britannica - in theLiberal party of William Gladstone.54 Good government, then, forGardiner, meant intelligent government conducted by an adminis-tration educated in the latest theories of political science, andhe was confident that this kind of government would persist inEngland because of the respect which the newly enfranchisedworking class had for intellect. The nineteenth century was ascientific age, he once observed, Darwin's discoveries were its mostcharacteristic achievement, and a respect for men of intellectualaccomplishment had spread to all classes. It was this "widespreadreverence for science and practical capacity" that had finally"robbed of its terrors that democratic suffrage which our fathersregarded as certain to swamp all the virtue and intelligence of thenation."55

Most of these beliefs Gardiner held in common with thatgeneration of Oxford and Cambridge-trained Liberals who hadgained their first political experiences with the university reformmovement of the 1850s and had entered national politics, often asjournalists, in the 1860s. Like Gardiner, these university men canbe described as liberal nationalists. They eagerly endorsed Italianunification and some of them, like the historians E. A. Freemanand James Bryce, later took up the cause of Balkan nationalism.Believing that a modern democracy could only function when thenation was more or less unified, they stressed the importance ofeliminating those economic and religious divisions that disrupted

54 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "George III," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 10: 382, Review of LordFitzmaurice's Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, Academy, 10 (9 December 1876): 558,"England, History," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8: 322, 328.

55 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Justin McCarthy's History of Our Own Times, Academy,18 (9 October 1880)1251.

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the political life of the nation. An important impetus behind thisLiberalism may have been the Broad Church movement whichundertook to reconcile political, class and religious differences byuniting all groups within a tolerant and comprehensive Church.University Liberals justified enlarging the franchise in 1867 on thegrounds that it would remove class divisions, create a unifiedpolitical community and make Parliament a national institution.The opening of Oxford and Cambridge to Dissenters, which beganwith the reforms of the 1850s and culminated in 1871 with theabolition of religious tests for fellowships, would likewise transformthe universities into national centers for higher education. LikeGardiner, these university Liberals advocated scientific govern-ment, conducted by an educated elite much like themselves, andthey naively believed that the deference and common sense of thenewly enfranchised working classes would lead them to vote forcandidates of intellect, thereby bringing about John Morley'santicipated alliance of "brains and numbers."56

When these hopes failed to materialize in the election of 1868,many university Liberals grew disillusioned with democraticprocesses. Rather than representing an alliance of "brains andnumbers," the election had returned a "chamber of mediocrity." Asthe reforming impetus behind Gladstone's first governmentdwindled in the early 1870s, many Liberals began to questionwhether in a democracy representative assemblies could everovercome the apparent mediocrity of the electorate. These doubtsseemed confirmed during the Bulgarian agitation and theMidlothian campaign as Gladstone, rather than leading the nation,stooped to demagoguery and allowed the uneducated opinion of theelectorate to lead him. The Home Rule crisis provided the turningpoint for these Liberal skeptics. Gladstone, they feared, had takenup a dangerous and ill-considered policy merely to appease Irishopinion.57

56 For university Liberalism, see: Christopher Harvie, The Lights of Liberalism: UniversityLiberals and the Challenge of Democracy, 1860-86 (London: Allen Lane, 1976). ChristopherKent, Brains and Numbers: Elitism, Comtism, and Democracy in Mid-Victorian England (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1978). Jeffrey Paul Von Arx, Progress and Pessimism: Religion,Politics, and History in Late Nineteenth Century Britain ( C a m b r i d g e , M a s s . : H a r v a r d U n i v e r -s i ty P r e s s , 1985) . P a r r y , Democracy and Religion, 239—257.

57 Von Arx, Progress and Pessimism. John Roach, "Liberalism and the Victorian Intelligentsia,"Cambridge Historical Journal, 13 (1957): 58—81. G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: AStudy in British Politics and Political Thought, i8gg-igi4 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), 1-33.

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Unlike many of his university colleagues, Gardiner neverdespaired of democracy. He acknowledged, to be sure, that Parlia-ments had their shortcomings. Reflecting all the commonplaces ofthe age, they were invariably conservative and therefore unlikelyto adopt reforms that were ahead of their time. A long line ofreformers, running from Bacon, Wentworth and Cromwell throughadvanced thinkers of his own day like the Positivist FredericHarrison, had consequently doubted the readiness of Parliamentsto adopt farsighted policies. But for Gardiner this was only half thepicture. Representative assemblies were also indispensable becauseonly they could ensure that reforms, though "slow in coming,"would be "permanent" once they had been made. Nor, he thought,were Parliaments as likely to obstruct progressive legislation in thepresent as they had been in the past since modern-day cabinetgovernment successfully combined a "very efficient administrationwith the supremacy of Parliament."58

in

The same liberal nationalism that informed Gardiner's politics alsoshaped his conception of the historian's craft. For Gardiner hopedto write a national history that would transcend party divisions."We have had historians in plenty," he observed in 1875, "but theyhave been Whig historians or Tory historians . . . I am not so vainas to suppose that I have always succeeded in doing justice to bothparties, but I have, at least, done my best not to misrepresenteither."59 There was for Gardiner an essential similarity betweenstatesmanship and the writing of history. What the statesmanachieved in politics, the historian set out to accomplish in the realmof ideas. Bacon, Wentworth and Cromwell - Gardiner's mostfrequently cited exemplars of true statesmanship - all shared atone time or another the ability to stand above party conflicts andto reconcile competing interests in the name of the nation.60

58 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Note on Wentworth's unpublished speech, Academy, 7 (12 June1875): 611, Review of A. Stern's Milton, Academy, 14 (14 December 1878): 558, "England,History," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8: 315-316, 318.

39 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, A History of England Under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I,1624-1628 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1875), 1: vi.

60 For Gardiner's views on statesmanship, see: [Samuel Rawson Gardiner], Item 21 of"Contemporary Literature," North British Review, American edition, 52 (April, 1870): 131.Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Abbott's Bacon and Essex, Academy, 11 (23 June 1877):

164 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Overcoming national divisions was also a principal concern for thehistorian, whose specific job was to remove the sources of conflictthat arose from competing interpretations of the past. Thehistorian must consequently understand all parties from the inside,he must empathize with them, even when he found their viewsuncongenial, and he must assess fairly the contribution each hadmade to the growth of the nation. "No history," Gardiner declared,"is ever properly written, unless the writer does his best to under-stand what people, of whose conduct or theories he disapproves,have to say for themselves."61 Only in this way would an image ofthe past emerge that would reconcile rather than divide.

In his reviews, Gardiner repeatedly admonished the greatVictorian historians - and many of the not so great as well - fortheir inability, or unwillingness, to judge fairly those parties whoseviews they did not find agreeable. Macaulay, Gardiner thought,had produced an "outrageous caricature of Strafford" because helacked the "suppleness" and "broad-mindedness" necessary to"sympathize" with unfamiliar points of view.62 David Masson, theVictorian biographer of Milton, may never have succumbedto Macaulay's "shallowness," but all the same he was unable toappreciate "the best points in Laud's character."63 John LothropMotley, the American historian of the Dutch republic, likewisesuffered from an "inability to enter into unfamiliar opinions."64

Given the close association of politics and religion in both theseventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Gardiner believed that itwas especially important for historians to empathize with allreligious parties so as to write history from the standpoint of thenation, not of a particular sect. Here too his contemporaries oftenfell short. Macaulay may have recognized the "exterior shape" of

547, Review of Abbott's Bacon, Academy, 27 (13 June 1885): 411-412, "Bacon, Francis,"Dictionary of National Biography, 1: 801-802, 808-809, Review of Traill's Strafford, TheAcademy, 36 (30 November 1889): 349-350. [Samuel Rawson Gardiner], "An EnglishRepublican," The Speaker, 10 (15 September 1894), 303.

61 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Mainwaring's Religion and Allegiance, Academy, 5(3januaryi874):4.

62 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "Angleterre," Revue historique, 2 (October-December, 1876):585.

63 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Masson's Milton, Academy, 5 (31 January 1874):112.

64 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Obituary ofJ. L. Motley, Academy, 11 (9June 1877): 509. See also,Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "Modern History," Contemporary Review, 33 (October, 1878):629, Review of Green's History of the English People, Academy, 15 (3 May 1879): 381.

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the Puritans, but he could not "penetrate into their souls" becausehe was "incapable of understanding idealism or enthusiasm of anysort."65 Even the great Ranke, whose works best represented thekind of "sublime and serene impartiality" that Gardiner wasseeking, had failed to engage with the religious side of his subject.66

Historians like David Masson or Peter Bayne, whose sympathies laywith Victorian Dissent, had also allowed their religious preferencesto shape their interpretations of the past. The result was sectarianhistory. Masson, Gardiner complained, simply did not know how towrite the history of England because he had failed to appreciatethat the followers of Archbishop Laud had made as great acontribution to the development of the nation as had Milton andthe Puritans. Masson's history was thus incomplete: it was merely"so much of the history as may concern a special sect of men."67

A scientific understanding of their craft, Gardiner believed,would provide historians with the means to transcend theirprejudices and achieve a degree of impartiality. Just as the devel-opment of political economy had enabled statesmen to govern forthe good of the nation as a whole, so the emergence of scientifichistory would put an end to the partisan approach to the past foundin the works of Macaulay and others.68 And yet it is not always clearwhat Gardiner meant by scientific history. In his obituary of Ranke,he criticized the German historian for not being sufficientlyscientific: "Is it not possible," Gardiner asked rhetorically, "to dofor history what Darwin did for science? Ranke, at all events, did notdo it. He knew of the influence upon individuals of great waves offeeling and opinion; but he does not seek for the law of humanprogress which underlies them."69 These comments suggest thatGardiner believed the growth of societies, like the evolution ofspecies, to be governed by laws which it was the historian's business

65 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "Angleterre,' Revue historique, 2 (October-December, 1876):586.

66 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Ranke's History of England, Academy, 7 (20 March1875): 285-286.

67 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Masson's Milton, Academy, 13 (30 March 1878): 277.See also Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Bayne's Chief Actors in the Puritan Revolution,Academy, 13 (18 May 1878): 430, and "Modern History," Contemporary Review, 33 (October,1878): 626.

68 S a m u e l R a w s o n G a r d i n e r , Rev iew of S p e d d i n g ' s Zi/£ of Bacon, Academy, 6 (10 O c t o b e r 1874):393-

69 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Obituary of Leopold von Ranke, Academy, 29 (29 May 1886): 381.

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to discover. But in his own work, Gardiner never really set out touncover these laws. His aim, he explained in the preface to hisHistory of England, was not to "sketch out" the laws of socialevolution, but rather to bring forth "the men and women in whoselives these laws [were] to be discerned."70 For the most part, whenGardiner spoke of scientific history, he simply meant the thoroughand objective analysis of facts, based on a first-hand use ofdocuments culled from as many archives as possible. Here, forGardiner, was the crucial distinction between the earlier historiansof Stuart England and himself: where they had engaged inpolemics, he was accumulating facts with the detachment of anaturalist. The honest, scientific disclosure of the factual record,Gardiner thought, would help ease sectarian conflict since most ofthe disagreements about the past that disrupted contemporarypolitics were only possible because party spokesmen deliberatelyobscured what had actually happened.

For Gardiner, the proper subject of history was the nation."Facts," he once said, "are only of importance as they help us tounderstand the changes of thought, of feeling, or of knowledgewhich mark the growth of that complex social unity which we call anation."71 And the fundamental forces responsible for shaping thenation were primarily intellectual. The acts of individuals onlybecame intelligible when seen in the context of the religious,political, scientific and artistic thought of the age. For this reason,Gardiner stressed in his own work the growth and conflict of ideas.To understand the making of England in the seventeenth century,one had to comprehend the interaction of Anglicanism and ofPuritanism, of Royalism and Parliamentarianism. The historian'stask was to rid himself of his modern biases and to become "instinc-tively familiar" with the "aims and ideas" of the period he wasdescribing, "however strange they may seem."72 To empathize withthe thoughts of the past, whether one approved of them or not, wasthe way to attain historical knowledge, and it was precisely whatMacaulay, Forster and others had been unable, or unwilling, to do.The problem with these previous historians was that they had

70 G a r d i n e r , History of England, i: v i i i - i x .71 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "Mr. Green and Mr. Rowley," Academy, 8 (n December 1875):

604.72 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Abbott's Bacon, Academy, 27 (13 June 1885): 411.

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judged the past according to the prejudices of the present. Failingto see the crucial differences between the seventeenth centuryand their own age, they had praised the Parliamentarians andcondemned the Royalists as though these parties were little morethan contemporary Whigs and Tories. To confuse past and presentin this manner Gardiner considered methodologically unsound. Hehad learned from Ranke, "the father of modern historicalresearch," and from Seeley that the frequent comparison of pastand present was "altogether destructive of real historicalknowledge."73

The desire for national unity lay at the heart of Gardiner'sLiberalism and once this is understood the most important aspectof his famed impartiality becomes clear: while it owed something toVictorian ideas about science and something to a Rankeanconception of the historian's craft, it was above all a Liberalhistorian's attempt to foster national unity by presenting abalanced interpretation of the Civil War. During the seventeenthcentury, two opposing views of Church and state had come intoconflict as England had to choose between Anglicanism andPuritanism, between absolute monarchy and representativegovernment. Gardiner's object was to describe this conflict and itwas the measure of his impartiality that he saw within each of thecontending parties a powerful and valid principle at work. Neitherking nor Parliament, Laudian nor Puritan was in total possession ofthe truth; each had acted at times in error, but each had also madelasting contributions to England's greatness. "England," he oncewrote, "sprang from a union between the Puritanism and theChurchmanship of the seventeenth century."74 In presenting thisimage of the past, Gardiner knew that he must confront two sets ofopponents. On one side were those Whigs and Dissenters whosefondness for representative government and religious freedom hadled them to see only good in Puritanism and only evil in the Stuartcause. On the other side were those critics of Puritanism whoseemed to value "culture" more than "liberty," a clear reference toMatthew Arnold, who had argued in Culture and Anarchy thatPuritanism was akin to fanaticism and therefore disruptive of the

73 Gardiner, History of England, i: vi-vii.74 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Guizot's L'Histoire de France, Academy, 8 (28 August

1875): 214.

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social order.75 Gardiner hoped to place himself between theseextremes and to the extent that he was successful, his historyof England offered the Victorians a grand synthesis which demon-strated that both parties in the Civil War had contributed in aconstructive way to the making of modern England.

IV

In evaluating the case against the Stuarts, Gardiner modified theusual notion of an English constitution. The result enabled him tointerpret the Civil War as a legitimate revolt by a unified nation.Whereas in the past historians had considered the constitution afixed body of law, to which they could appeal when determining thelegality of a given act of government, Gardiner pointed out that itwas in fact something much less definite: "The- letter of the oldstatutes," he warned, "was singularly confused and uncertain." Thelaws of England had never been fixed, but had evolved overcenturies as opposing ideas of government had come into conflict.Depending on where one looked, after all, precedent could be foundfor any number of conflicting practices.76 Instead of focusing on thedetails of the constitution, Gardiner appealed to its "spirit."Throughout the ages, England's kings had attempted to rule insympathy with their subjects. They had turned regularly to therepresentatives of the nation, either Lords or Commons, in order toseek the advice, meet the grievances and retain the confidence ofthe people. At all times it was this harmony between the king andhis subjects that made good government possible, and any policywhich promoted such harmony was, Gardiner implied, in accordwith the constitution's "spirit."77

If, as Gardiner argued, the "responsibility of the Crown tothe nation" formed the essence of the constitution, then from theearliest times onward, the mechanism ensuring this responsibilityhad been the crown's fear of rebellion. An English king who ranafoul of the nation's wishes risked the possibility that his subjectsmight rise against him, and Gardiner suggested that such acts ofrebellion were a legitimate part of the constitution: "A view of theconstitution," he explained, "which takes no account of these acts

75 Gardiner, Fall of Charles, i: vi-vii.76 Gardiner, History of England, 2: 76-77, 6: 83. 77 Ibid., 2: 195, 3: 397, 4: 263-264, 6: 120.

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of violence is like a view of geology which takes no account ofearthquakes and volcanoes." More than a fixed body of law, theconstitution was a "mass of custom and opinion" which includedwithin it the use of force as a means of making sure "that a king whospoke for himself and acted for himself should not be permittedto reign."78 Under Elizabeth's guidance, England had enjoyedparticularly good government. A wise and sympathetic leader, shehad shaped the fears and aspirations of her countrymen intosuccessful policies, never once losing their trust.79 Unfortunatelyfor England, her Stuart successors lacked those qualities which hadenabled Elizabeth to share in almost all the prejudices of herage. Unable to see that they, too, must make the interests of thecountry their own if they were to govern successfully, James andCharles pursued unpopular policies, lost the confidence of theirParliaments, and in due time drove them to rebellion.80 Only afterhalf a century of revolution, culminating in the events of 1688 andthe establishment of cabinet government, was a new, morepeaceful mechanism found to guarantee the responsibility of thecrown to the nation.81

Gardiner conceded, however, that even under the best ofcircumstances the early Stuarts could not have governed asElizabeth had. As a result of the emergency brought on by herstruggle against Catholicism and especially by the threatenedSpanish invasion, the Queen had amassed a considerable pre-rogative. James and Charles may have hoped to wield the sameauthority, but inevitably they were prevented from doing so. Thecrises of the sixteenth century warranting a strong executive wereabsent in the seventeenth, and Parliament began to deny theStuarts those extraordinary powers which it had so willinglygranted to Elizabeth.82 England had also advanced steadily inwealth and civilization throughout the Elizabethan years and itsrepresentatives were now, under the Stuarts, beginning to demanda share in the direction of national affairs commensurate with theirnew standing. "It was impossible," Gardiner wrote, "that a peoplegrowing in intelligence and wealth, undistracted by vital differ-ences of opinion, and trained to political action by the discipline ofcenturies, could long be kept back from taking a far more active

78 Ibid., 6: 314-315. 79 Ibid., 1: 191-194, 6: 315, 7: 79.80 Ibid., 1: 174, 193-194. 81 Ibid., 9: 401-402, 10: 14. 82 Ibid., 1: 42, 161-162.

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part in public affairs than had been possible under the sceptre ofElizabeth." The disputes over purveyance, wardship, monopoliesand impositions which had engaged the Parliaments of James Iwere signs of the nation's growing awareness of its capacity for self-government. For Gardiner, then, the quarrel between king andCommons, which would trouble England almost without inter-ruption from the accession of James in 1603 until the Revolution of1688, had its origins in the Elizabethan monarchy and most likelywould have occurred no matter who occupied the throne.83

Gardiner, then, regarded the Civil War in its political dimensionas the legitimate revolt of a unified country, increasingly aware ofits capacity for self-government and jealous of its newly acquiredwealth, against a king who had ignored and contravened its wishes.From the Tudors onward, Parliament had come to represent thewill of the people. England, Gardiner argued, "had grown up intoa harmonious civilization, so that its Parliament was the truerepresentative of a united nation . . . The position which wasoccupied by the House of Commons at the close of the reign ofElizabeth, was due to the complete harmony in which it stood withthe feelings and even with the prejudices of all classes of thepeople."84 And on the eve of the Civil War, this Parliament wasunanimous in its denunciation of the type of government whichCharles had practiced. Had the only issues at stake been consti-tutional, had the nation not also been divided on questions of religion,then Charles would have found no support among his subjects,except perhaps for a small and insignificant group of courtiers. Inshort, there would have been no Civil War because there wouldhave been no Royalist party, just an isolated king, and "Charleswould have been swept away by the uprising of a united people."85

When Gardiner depicted the political revolt against the Stuartsas the legitimate expression of the national will, he was affirmingthe liberal precept that executive government must listen to thevoice of the nation as spoken by its representatives. The "principle,"Gardiner wrote, "that, when new circumstances call for new modesof action, the course to be pursued must be resolved upon inconcurrence with those men whom the nation chooses or allows torepresent it," was the principle on which "the greatness of Englandhad rested in past ages," and which the Parliaments of the

83 Ibid., 4: 36. 84 Ibid., i: 159-160. 85 Ibid., 10: 11-12, 32.

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seventeenth century were engaged in vindicating for the "benefit ofposterity."86 The statesmen who best personified this precept werethe two most prominent leaders of the Commons: Sir John Eliot,who "idealized" Parliament, considering it the "mirror" of thenation's "wisdom"; and John Pym, whose "mind teemed withthe thoughts, the beliefs, the prejudices of his age," and who was"strong with the strength and weak with the weaknesses" of hisgeneration.87 But as his evaluation of Pym suggests, Gardiner alsobelieved that no matter how indispensable the contribution ofParliament might be for good government, such an institutioncould never rule alone. The Stuart Parliament was inevitablyconservative, closed to new ideas and often ignorant. Its ascendancycould have its "ugly side": Parliament might come to represent the"interests" of a few rather than the "wisdom" of the whole, andunless "aroused to reverence for justice," it might become "asarbitrary as Charles had ever been."88 When confronted with newproblems, the seventeenth-century Parliament was rarely capableof rising above the prejudices of the age and seeing that newremedies were required. Pym never appreciated the importance oftoleration and for this reason Gardiner considered his leadership ofthe Commons to have been a failure in the end.

Gardiner's history, however, had the effect of reconciling partydivisions by emphasizing the positive contribution made by bothsides in the Civil War. The defenders of Parliament had stood for anoble ideal which eventually gained permanent recognition asthe burden of government shifted to the Commons following theRevolution of 1688. But the supporters of the royal prerogative -statesmen such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Wentworth - werealso, Gardiner affirmed, partly correct when they argued that onlya strong executive would provide the means to overcome the narrowvision of Parliament. Bacon, a great reformer, looked to the king'sprerogative as the instrument to carry through his reforms,knowing full well that the Commons would never consent toprograms so far in advance of the age. According to his ideal ofgovernment, the executive should be as free as possible in order toimplement the most far-reaching changes for the improvement ofmankind.89 But though Gardiner recognized a considerable degree

86 Ibid., 6: 211. 87 Ibid., 5: 187, 244.88 Ibid., 5: 434-435, 6: 209—210. 89 Ibid., 2: 191-193.

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of truth in Bacon's reasoning, he was also aware of its dangers:"[Bacon] left out of his calculation," Gardiner warned, " . . . theinevitable tendencies to misgovernment which beset all bodies ofmen who are possessed of irresponsible power."90 In the end,Gardiner found neither the defenders of Parliament nor thechampions of the royal prerogative wholly correct. Good govern-ment, he implied, would result only when the principles of Pymcombined with those of Bacon, when a popular assembly joinedforces with a capable executive. In essence, this was the modernarrangement: if Pym's ideals were embodied in the VictorianParliament, then Bacon's were realized in the cabinet.91

The Civil War was undoubtedly the most divisive event in Britishhistory, and of all the discord it created the most damaging was theecclesiastical split between Anglican and Dissenter which persistedwell into the nineteenth century. During the years when Gardinerwas writing his History of England, Protestant Nonconformityexercised a greater influence on national politics than ever before.Following the Reform Act of 1867, Nonconformists became animportant force behind the Liberal party, working for a variety ofcauses, including Irish Church disestablishment, the abolitionof Church rates, nondenominational state-funded education, theelimination of the remaining religious tests at Oxford andCambridge, and the right of Nonconformist ministers to presideover burials in parish churchyards.92 Not surprisingly, given theintensity of this sectarian discord, the religious dimension ofthe Civil War had a particular fascination for the Victorians. LikeCarlyle, Gardiner regarded the conflict in large part as a religiousstruggle. What Carlyle had termed a "Puritan revolt," Gardinercalled a "Puritan revolution." In his history, Gardiner repeatedseveral times that England would never have gone to war in 1642

90 Ibid., 2: 195. 91 Ibid., 2: 194.92 For the role of Nonconformity in English politics, see among others: George Kitson Clark,

The Making of Victorian England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962),147-205. D. W. Bebbington, The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, i8yo-igi4(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1982). Marsh, Victorian Church in Decline, 242-263.Machin, Politics and the Churches, i86$-ig2i, 1-167. Parry, Democracy and Religion, 200-228,261-452.

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over the crown's violation of the constitution. What brought thenation to arms was the emergence of two incompatible views onhow the national Church should be governed, its theology definedand its worship conducted.93 The Civil War was above all a conflictbetween Calvinists on one side and Laudians on the other.

For Gardiner, religious diversity was the inevitable outcome ofthe English Reformation as two tendencies came to characterizethe nation's spiritual life following the breach with Rome. Whereasmost English Protestants during Elizabeth's reign were Calvinistsin theology, Episcopalians on matters of Church government andsatisfied with the forms of worship prescribed in the ElizabethanPrayer Book, a small but significant group of Puritan clergy desireda simpler ritual and considered the Presbyterian system of ecclesi-astical government of divine origin.94 Faced with this diversity,Elizabeth had two options: either she could broaden the Church toencompass all varieties of Protestant belief, thereby making theEstablishment truly national, or she could enforce a more narrowuniformity. Like his hero Sir Francis Bacon, Gardiner would havepreferred the first, believing that a genuinely comprehensiveChurch would have put an end to sectarian strife.95 Elizabeth,however, chose the second. Favoring an elaborate ritual, she set outto enforce uniformity to her ideal, and in so doing, sowed the seedsof future discord because her policy guaranteed that a body ofNonconformists, or Puritans, would exist outside the Establish-ment. "It was inevitable," Gardiner concluded, "that strife, and notpeace, should be the ultimate result of what Elizabeth had done."She left, "as a legacy to her successor, an ecclesiastical systemwhich . . . threatened to divide the nation into two hostile camps."96

When James and Charles likewise chose uniformity instead ofcomprehension, the prospect of civil war became even more certain.

By the time Charles convened the Long Parliament in 1640,Puritanism had become a considerable force in both Church andstate, and Gardiner attributed its steady growth during the earlyseventeenth century in part to the incompetent statesmanship ofthe Stuarts. Puritanism, he argued, was always strongest at thosemoments when England's Protestant faith seemed threatened. Itwas prominent at the end of the sixteenth century when invasion by

93 Ga.rdiner,History of England, 10: 11-13,32. 94 Ibid., 1: 17-27.95 Ibid., 1: 146-147. % Ibid., 1: 27, 33.

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Catholic Spain was imminent, and it became strong once againunder the Stuarts when the outbreak of the Thirty Years War madethe future of Protestantism appear uncertain both in England andon the continent. Faced with this crisis in foreign affairs, neitherJames nor Charles could carry through a successful anti-Catholicpolicy, and according to Gardiner this failure was a major impetusbehind the spread of Puritanism. When, for most EnglishProtestants, James should have been combating the spread ofPopery, he was instead attempting to establish peaceful relationswith the two most powerful Catholic nations by negotiating amarriage between Charles and either a Spanish or French bride.The significance for England of this proposed union was immense.Appearing to Englishmen at the time as a dangerous concessionto Catholicism and a threat to the security of their own faith, itled directly to the increase of Puritanism: "When the [Spanish]marriage was first agitated," Gardiner wrote, "the leading minds ofthe age were tending in a direction adverse to Puritanism . . . Whenit was finally broken off, the leading minds of the age were tendingin a precisely opposite direction, and that period of our historycommenced which led up to the anti-episcopalian fervour of theLong Parliament."97

More important, however, for the development and spread ofPuritanism were the efforts of a small number of Churchmen, ledby William Laud, to challenge the predominance of Calvinismwithin the Church of England. A learned elite with little popularsupport, the Laudians looked to the crown as the instrument tocarry through their reforms. They preached the divine right ofkings, and in return Charles sanctioned their innovations indoctrine and worship and gave preference to their candidatesin ecclesiastical appointments.98 The rise of the Laudians to powerin the Church and the willingness of the crown to encourage themwas, Gardiner argued, one of the most significant forces leading thenation to war. For the Puritan opposition increased steadily as Laudand his followers transformed the Church of England, purging it ofits Calvinist theology and practices. Puritanism, which began as asmall opposition to certain rituals found in the Prayer Book, hadcome by 1640 to represent the Calvinism prevalent among the

97 G a r d i n e r , Charles and the Spanish Marriage, i: v.98 Gardiner, History of England, 6: 203-204, 7: 127-128.

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English nation. When the Civil War broke out in 1642, the partieslargely divided on religious lines: on the Royalist side were thesupporters of Laud, the Bishops, and the Book of Common Prayer;on the side of Parliament were the upholders of Calvinism.

The particular virtue of Gardiner's approach was that inassessing these two ecclesiastical parties he found something ofvalue in each of them. Calvinism he considered above all apowerful moral force. It had emerged in Europe after the LutheranReformation had removed the Catholic Church as the center ofauthority, and it had restored order to the Protestant world byimposing a rigid discipline. The Calvinist advocated "self-restraint"and "self-denial," and he displayed a "stern dislike to even innocentpleasures." He proclaimed that man's purpose on earth was not towork for his own salvation, but to implement the will of God.Concerning forms of worship, the Calvinist rejected elaboraterituals. Emphasizing the need for sermons rather than sacraments,he believed that divine grace acted on the mind through thepreaching of the Gospel, not on the senses through sumptuousceremonies." Calvinism, Gardiner wrote in a characteristicpassage,had done great things for Europe. At a time when the individualtendencies of Protestantism threatened to run riot, it had given to mena consistent creed and an unbending moral discipline, which was yetProtestant to the core . . . Wherever the struggle with Rome was thedeadliest, it was under the banner of Calvinism that the battle had beenwaged. Wherever in quiet villages, or in the lanes of great cities, anyonewoke up to the consciousness that a harder battle with sin was to be wagedin his heart, it was in the strength of the Calvinistic creed that he hadequipped himself for the contest. Alone with his God, the repentantstruggling sinner entered the valley of the shadow of death.100

But if Gardiner valued Puritanism as a moral force, he was equallycognizant of its drawbacks. In the Calvinist scheme of society, theclergy were supreme, bound by neither the secular magistrate northe law, and within this theocracy there was nothing to preventthem from exercising a tyranny which would destroy all meaningfulliberty. Calvinists, Gardiner warned, "were not seldom narrow-minded and egotistical. In their hatred of vice, they were apt to beintolerant of pleasure . . . If ever they succeeded in acquiring

99 Ibid., 1: 16-19, 3: 242. 10° Ibid., 5: 355.

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political power, they would find it hard to avoid using it for thepurpose of coercing the world into morality."101

Laudianism arose in England as a reaction against the rigidity,narrowness and unreasonableness of Calvinism. For Laud himself,Gardiner had little sympathy or respect. But for the intellectualmovement to which the Churchman's name was attached,Gardiner had considerable praise. The Laudians, he argued,represented the modern tendency in seventeenth-century theology:They claimed to think for themselves . . . , and to search for goodness andtruth on every side . . . They were offended with [Calvinism's] dogmatism,with its pretensions to classify and arrange men's notions of mysterieswhich eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and they claimed the right to saythat there were things on which the popular religion had pronouncedclearly, which were beyond the domain of human knowledge.

The Laudians, he concluded,

were intellectually the Liberal Churchmen of the age. They stood betweentwo infallibilities — the infallibility of Calvinism and the infallibility ofRome — not indeed casting off entirely the authority of the past, but, atleast in a considerable sphere of thought, asking for evidence andargument at each step which they took, and daring to remain inuncertainty when reason was not satisfied.102

For Gardiner, the Laudians represented the continuation of theRenaissance spirit into the seventeenth century. They werethe intellectual descendants of one of the greatest thinkers of theEnglish Renaissance, Hooker, who had likewise displayed a markeddistrust of all dogmatic assertions.103 It was not the Puritans who"inspired the progressive movement of the age," but rather thefollowers of Laud.104

Like the Puritans, the Laudians were also concerned withimproving the moral tenor of their society. But where the Puritanhoped to influence men by preaching to their intellect, the Laudiansought to inculcate the habits of piety and morality by means of auniform and repetitive appeal to the senses. By subjecting thechurchgoer over and over again to the same suggestive ceremonies,he hoped to use "the senses . . . to reach the heart." As the Laudianunderstood it: "Men were to be schooled into piety by habitual

101 Ibid., 1: 22-26, 3: 242-243. 102 Ibid., 5: 357. 103 Ibid., 1: 39, 41, 5: 359.104 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of Lewis's Life of Joseph Hall, Academy, 29 (17 April 1886):

267.

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attendance upon the services of the Church . . . Uniformity ofliturgical forms and uniformity of ecclesiastical ceremony wouldimpress upon every Englishman the lessons of devotion."105 Movingfrom strengths to weaknesses, Gardiner also pointed out thatthe Laudian view was prone to certain dangers. Considering theChurch supreme, this "new school" of ecclesiastics would nothesitate to use political power to impose it on everyone regardlessof whether they approved of it or not.106

Gardiner's purpose was to heal the religious divisions which theCivil War had created. He wrote an even-handed narrative whichindicated how national unity could arise out of so divisive an event.He suggested that both parties in the Civil War had, in truth,participated in something far greater than mere internecine strife.They had engaged in a struggle out of which emerged the idea ofreligious liberty. The freedom to think and speak as one chose inmatters of conscience was, Gardiner argued, the noble consequencewhich ultimately gave meaning to that otherwise lamentable event.England had gone to war in 1642 because neither Puritan norLaudian had understood the importance of toleration, neither Pymnor Hyde had realized that the ecclesiastical problem would not besolved until allowance were made for both conceptions of theChurch.107 With no understanding of toleration, war was inevitable.But it was precisely because both sides stood their ground andfought for their ideals, that the principle of toleration finallyprevailed. "If it was in England," Gardiner wrote, "that the greatproblem of the seventeenth century was solved by liberty of speechand thought . . . , it [was] because at this crisis of her fate she didnot choose to lie down and slumber."108

Gardiner agreed with those critics who argued that Laud himselfwas wholly ignorant of the value of religious liberty.109 Though hemay have opposed the two "infallibilities" of Geneva and Rome,Laud was nevertheless so confident in the truth of his own viewsthat he imposed on the Church of England a rigid uniformity inwhich freedom of conscience played absolutely no role. Within theLaudian position, however, there were tendencies which wouldcontribute to the latitudinarian ideas of a later age, and Gardiner

105 Gardiner, History of England, 2: 124-125, 3: 243-244.106 Ibid., 3: 244. 107 Ibid., 10: 32-34.108 Ibid., 10: 35. 109 Ibid., 7: 125, 301-302.

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suggested that a direct line of intellectual development could betraced from Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, through thinkers of theLaudian school, to Locke's Letters on Toleration.,110 Laud had lookedwith "contempt" on those "endless discussions about problemswhich it was impossible for the human intellect to solve," andGardiner pointed out that it was only a small step from this dislikeof "dogmatic controversy" to the latitudinarian thinking ofChillingworth. In his Religion of Protestants, Chillingworth hadargued that men had no right to force their religious beliefs onothers because human reason was too prone to error whenconsidering the mysteries of Christianity. Instead of imposingdogmatic and most likely erroneous interpretations on others, theChurch should require adherence to only the clearly revealedtruths of Christianity while allowing for a variety of views onthe more controversial points of doctrine. Thus, for Gardiner, theidea of comprehension first took hold within the Laudianschool.111

The Puritans before 1642 were for the most part no more inclinedtoward liberty of conscience than was Laud. But after the outbreakof the Civil War, Puritanism fragmented and among some of itscompeting groups, especially among the Independents, ideas oftoleration began to flourish. Independency had developed duringthe war as an alternative to Presbyterianism, which had becomeincreasingly popular ever since Parliament turned to Scotland formilitary assistance, and as an alternative to the beliefs of theextreme Separatists. In response to these two groups, Gardinerargued, the Independents had "hit upon a wise middle course,"holding that "no congregation ought to be subjected to coercivejurisdiction outside itself." Whereas the Presbyterians consideredthe clergy supreme in secular as well as spiritual affairs, theIndependents wished to maintain the supremacy of the laity. Andwhereas the Separatists declared the Established Church to beapostate, the Independents were willing to accept the Church

110 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649, new edition (London:Longmans, Green and Co., 1893-1894), 1: 276. Gardiner also made his position clear in areview of J. R. Green's Short History of the English People: "Mr. Green," Gardiner wrote,"misses the connexion of thought between Laud and the Latitudinarians, thus omittingthe link which bound the men of the new learning in the sixteenth century to theTillotsons and Lockes of a later day." Academy, 6 (5 December 1874): 602.

111 Gardiner, History of England, 7: 20, 8: 262, Great Civil War, 1: 285, 2: 108.

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on the condition that it would allow freedom to individualcongregations.112 During the war, Independency found itschampion in Oliver Cromwell, who was willing to grant tolerationto anyone providing he was determined to defeat the Royalists. AsGardiner pointed out, however, Cromwell's idea of toleration wasactually limited since it did not extend to parties outside thePuritan camp. "How to get the best soldiers was the problem whichmade Cromwell tolerant, and tolerance built upon so material afoundation would to the end have something in it narrower thanChillingworth's craving for the full light of truth."113

The principle of religious freedom did not triumph in Englanduntil many years after the Civil War. But when it finally did gainofficial recognition following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, it wasable to do so because the conflicts of the Civil War had alreadyprepared the ground. Most important for Gardiner was the factthat liberty of conscience, as it developed in England, owed some-thing crucial to the complementary notions of comprehension andtoleration which had gained acceptance among the Royalists andPuritans respectively. Comprehension, Gardiner wrote, "wouldsoften down asperities, and teach the assured dogmatist to put onsomething of that humility in which the controversialist of allperiods is so grievously deficient." Toleration, on the other hand,"would prepare room for the unchecked development of thatindividuality which is the foundation of all true vigour in churchesand in nations."114

Gardiner's view of the development of religious freedom inEngland brought together two distinct interpretations which thesectarian controversies of the Victorian period had tended to placein opposition. When he stressed the contribution that Puritanismhad made to the growth of liberty and toleration, he was repeatingthe arguments that Nonconformist historians like William Godwin,

112 Gardiner, Great Civil War, i: 261-263. 113 Ibid., 1: 312.114 Gardiner, History of England, 8: 268. Gardiner made a similar point in a review of A. Stern's

Milton und seine Zeit: "His argument that religious liberty is impossible without libertyof Sectarian association is unanswerable, and it is equally clear that the Independents,and not the Latitudinarians, were the persons who first adopted the idea of sectarianassociation. But would the right of these sects to exist ever have obtained practicalacknowledgement unless the Latitudinarians had diffused as widely as possible the ideathat it was a good thing to leave as many open questions as possible, and had thus fosteredthe habit of regarding men of opinions opposed to one's own as persons with whom it wasunnecessary to quarrel?" Academy, 11 (24 February 1877): 157.

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John Forster or Robert Vaughan had been making since the 1820s,and that David Masson was popularizing in the 1870s in his massivebiography of John Milton. Masson had once intended to become aminister in the Church of Scotland but, falling under the influenceof Thomas Chalmers, he had walked out of the Church during theGreat Disruption and embarked on a literary career in London.Masson's Milton was a work of considerable scholarship, based on anextensive use of documentary evidence and containing a completehistory of England alongside a biography of its subject. Speaking inthe voice of the Scottish Disruption, Masson traced the idea oftoleration to the Independents, particularly the Baptists, and hesaw its champions in Milton and Cromwell, its nemeses in Laud andCharles. For Masson, it was the Cromwell of the Protectorate whoanticipated the liberal solution to England's religious difficultieswhen he advocated a comprehensive national Church and completetoleration for those Sectaries whose faith would not allow them toconform.115 Gardiner's reaction to Masson's work is instructive forthe insights it provides into his own designs. Though he agreed withone half of Masson's interpretation, he objected strongly to itspartisan spirit. "The historian," Gardiner wrote, "may justly claimto have his preferences, but he may make no exclusions. He musttake account of all the forces by which society is influenced, and thisis precisely what Prof. Masson deliberately refuses to do." Masson'sgreat shortcoming was that in praising - quite rightly - whatMilton and Cromwell had done for the cause of religious freedom,he had failed to see that the Commonwealth and Protectorate werenot the whole of English history. The opponents of the Puritans,after all, had triumphed at the Restoration and their impact onthe development of the nation deserved an equally honest treat-ment.116

When Gardiner told the other half of the story, pointing out thecontribution that the Laudian dislike of dogmatism had made tothe idea of comprehension, he made use of an interpretationfavored by liberal Anglicans. In Saint Paul and Protestantism, for

115 David Masson, The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical,and Literary History of His Time, new and revised edition (London: Macmillan andCompany, 1871-1894), 3: 99-109, 129, 166-171, 343-344, 525, 5: 54-72.

116 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Reviews of Masson's Milton, Academy, 5 (31 January 1874): 112,and 13 (30 March 1878): 277. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "Modern History," ContemporaryReview, 37 (June, 1880): 1056.

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instance, Matthew Arnold alluded to a similar connection betweenthe critical spirit of the Renaissance, the High Churchmen of theLaudian school and the latitudinarians of a later period. For Arnold,as for Gardiner, the Laudian Church rejected Calvinism because ofits narrowness, rigidity and unreasonableness, preferring Arminiandoctrines instead. The Arminianism of the Stuart Church, Arnoldwrote, again echoing Gardiner, represented "an effort of man'spractical good sense to get rid of what is shocking to it inCalvinism." Because it regarded doctrine as something broad anddeveloping, Anglicanism kept its formularies open and indefinite,whereas Puritanism conceived of doctrine as narrow and fixed. Freeinquiry, Arnold concluded, was therefore more congenial toAnglicanism than to Puritanism, and the "growth and movement"of religious thought was consequently found within the Church, notamong the Puritans.117

The comparison with Arnold can be taken even further. InCulture and Anarchy, Arnold presented his classic analysis of theHebraic and Hellenic traditions which he believed had shapedmodern England. Where for Arnold, Hebraism emphasized properconduct and strict obedience to moral rules, Hellenism stressedright reason and the play of intellect. Where Hebraism was foundin the uncompromising moral earnestness of England's Puritanand Nonconformist heritage, Hellenism existed in the intellectualtradition of the Anglican Church and universities. Culture andAnarchy had appeared serially while Gardiner was completing PrinceCharles and the Spanish Marriage, and Gardiner was certainly familiarwith it. Like Arnold, he too saw the Dissenting and Anglicantraditions as the principal forces behind the making of modernEngland. When Gardiner described Puritanism as being inflexibleand dogmatic, and when he saw in Laudianism a continuation ofRenaissance rationality, he was speaking in terms reminiscentof Arnold's essay. But here the similarity ended. Arnold, alarmedat the growth and political influence of Nonconformity, wasattempting to prod the Nonconformists back into the EstablishedChurch by undermining the justification for their dissent. In Cultureand Anarchy, he attacked Hebraism for its narrow vision and praisedHellenism for its "sweetness and light." In Saint Paul and

117 The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press, 1968), 6: 76-85, 91-92, 100-101.

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Protestantism, he demonstrated how the Dissenters had based theirseparation from the Church on a misreading of Scripture.Gardiner, sharing none of Arnold's antipathy for Dissent andconceiving of the nation as something broad enough to contain botha Dissenting and a conforming tradition, was more even-handed.Both of these traditions, he suggested, were legitimate products ofthe Reformation. They had clashed, lamentably, in the Civil War,but ever since the establishment of toleration in 1689, they hadexerted a healthy influence on one another as the "serious intelli-gence of the Puritan" combined with the "breadth of view andartistic perception of the Churchman."118

The one position to which Gardiner gave little credence was theHigh Church interpretation that regarded Laud as the preserverof a historic Christianity within the Anglican Church. WalterFarquhar Hook, the High Anglican Dean of Chichester, argued inhis Lives of the Archbishops that Laud saved the true catholic Churchin England from the corruptions of Rome on the one hand and theravages of a Puritan minority on the other. When he strove foruniformity, he was ensuring that this truth would remain at theheart of English Christianity.119 For Gardiner, however, thisinterpretation emphasized only one small part of Laud's endeavor.For Laud wanted to do more than simply hand down a body ofdoctrine and a form of ceremonial. His conception of the Churchstressed a uniformity of worship which he was ready to use thecoercive powers of the state to attain. But here, for Gardiner, wasLaud's great failure. At no time had his conception of the Churchtaken hold. Neither during his own lifetime nor at the Restorationhad the Anglican Church achieved the degree of uniformity forwhich Laud had stood. Indeed, the Toleration Act of 1689 hadacknowledged the very opposite of uniformity. Even moreimportant, this High Church interpretation failed to discernwhat was actually Laud's greatest legacy. In their dislike oflatitudinarianism and their desire to see Anglican theologyfixed for all time in the Prayer Book of 1662, High Churchmenlike Hook were unable to see the contribution that Laud had

118 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, 1603-1660(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1876), 205.

119 Walter Farquhar Hook, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (London: Richard Bentley andSon, 1860-1884), 11: vii-xiv, 389-390.

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made to growth of latitudinarian sentiments within the AnglicanChurch.120

Reviewing the Great Civil War in 1887, Sir John Seeley argued thatGardiner was the first "serious" student of Stuart England becausehe was the first to write its history from a perspective free frompolitical partisanship.121 In one sense, Seeley's judgment was trueenough. Gardiner certainly worked hard to be fair to all sides, hetried to avoid pronouncements not founded on documentaryevidence, and he never exhibited the party spirit of earlierhistorians. But if Seeley meant to imply that Gardiner's history hadno ideological dimension, then his judgment needs qualification.For Gardiner's attempt to unite Anglicanism and Dissent in onecomprehensive interpretation of the seventeenth century was anexpression of late Victorian Liberalism. As a nationalist, Gardinerused history as a tool for nation building, and as a Gladstonian, heenvisioned building a nation characterized by religious equality.His experiences as an Irvingite in a society that was still predomi-nantly Anglican had impressed on him the folly of religiousdiscrimination and the wisdom of tolerating Dissent whileincorporating the widest variety of Christian belief within theEstablished Church. Gardiner's desire to moderate sectariandiscord was consistent with the aims of other Liberals who wereattempting to create conditions conducive to modern democracy byeasing those divisions that disrupted English political life. When hepresented an interpretation of the Stuarts that brought togetherAnglicanism and Dissent, Gardiner thus gave expression to thesame Liberalism that led him to endorse Balkan nationalism inthe 1870s, opt for Irish Home Rule in the 1880s, and question theBoer War in the 1890s. The result of his life's labor was an image ofthe Stuart past that met the expectations of Victorian Liberalism.

120 Gardiner, Great Civil War, 2: 108. See also Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of C. H.Simpkinson's Life and Times of William Laud and W. H. Hutton's William Laud, EnglishHistorical Review, 10 (1895): 373.

121 J. R. Seeley, Review of Gardiner's Great Civil War, Academy, 31 (21 May 1887): 353.

CHAPTER 5

Cromwell and the late Victorians

The statue of Oliver Cromwell, which still stands outside theHouses of Parliament, has a troubled story behind it. In 1895,during the final weeks of Lord Rosebery's Liberal government, thecabinet decided to commemorate the tercentenary of Cromwell'sbirth, which would occur in 1899, by using public funds to com-mission a statue in the Protector's honor. But when the proposalwas placed before the Commons, it provoked an uproar. "TheIrishmen took fire," John Morley wrote later, describing the scene."Drogheda, and all the other deeds of two centuries and a halfbefore, blazed into memory as if they had happened yesterday.Nationalist wrath was aided by Unionist satire. Did peace Liberalsthen, we were asked, honour Oliver as the great soldier, or was itthe jingo in international policy, or the founder of a big navy, orthe armed destroyer of the House of Commons?" Eventually, thegovernment was forced to withdraw its proposal in order to avoidthe risk of alienating such an important Liberal constituency as theIrish. Rosebery, however, was not to be outdone. Taking on himselfthe cost of the statue, he commissioned Hamo Thornycroft toexecute the work, and in 1899 the memorial to Oliver Cromwellappeared outside Westminster Hall as originally planned, angeringonce again the Irish and Conservatives.1

The decision to celebrate Cromwell's tercentenary with a statue,despite the outcry it occasioned, marks something of a watershed inEngland's appreciation of its Cromwellian past. A century earlier itwould have been unthinkable to honor the Protector with a public

1 John Morley,Recollections (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 2: 48. Lord Rosebery, "Cromwell,"Miscellanies, Literary and Historical (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921), 1: 77-79. TheTimes, 31 October 1899, 8. The Times, 1 November 1899, 8, 9. Robert Rhodes James,Rosebery: A Biography of Archibald Philip, Fifth Earl of Rosebery (London: Weidenfeld andNicolson, 1963), 381-382.

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Cromwell and the late Victorians 185

monument of any kind. In 1799, England was at war with the FrenchRevolution, and the fear of radicalism, both abroad and at home,made any appeal to Cromwell appear subversive. For defenders ofthe Establishment, Cromwell epitomized that radicalism which inthe seventeenth century had overturned the monarchy and theChurch, and which now seemed to inspire Dissenters, Whigs andFrench revolutionaries. In his Reflections, Edmund Burke hademphasized this connection between the radical politics of the pastand those of the present when he alluded to the regicides in orderto point out the dangers inherent in contemporary Dissent. To havehonored Cromwell's bicentenary would have meant endorsingthose revolutionary forces that were tearing France apart andthat threatened to do the same in England. Nor did Cromwellfare any better among the Establishment's opponents. ModerateWhigs accused him of destroying England's mixed constitution,radicals denounced him as the apostate who turned against therepublic for which the Civil War had been fought, and bothaccused him of destroying English liberty for the sake of his ownambition.

By the 1890s, circumstances had changed. The threat ofrevolution had largely vanished, and the blend of radicalism andDissent that Cromwell symbolized was no longer as worrisome as ithad once been. Democracy had come peacefully with the threereform acts, while Dissent no longer posed a challenge to thefundamentals of the English constitution. Although radicalismstill existed, it was now located within the labor movement, andspokesmen for the working-class had never seen in Cromwell aparticularly inspiring hero. Even more to the point, newconditions had developed toward the end of the century thatenhanced greatly Cromwell's appeal. The 1890s were a time ofgrowing international anxiety, as the emergence of foreign rivals,particularly Germany, shook England's confidence in itself as aworld power. The fact that interest in Cromwell coincided withEngland's poor performance in the Boer War suggests that thenation was searching for a historic myth that would restore its self-esteem. The Cromwellian past, now shorn of its revolutionarysignificance, seemed admirably suited for this kind of moraleboosting since it had witnessed the growth of free institutions athome as well as the assertion of national power abroad. Speakingat the unveiling of the Protector's statue, Rosebery stressed

186 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

the important themes. Englishmen, he declared should admireCromwell because he was a soldier who never lost a battle, a rulerwho fought for liberty and toleration, and an imperialist who madeEngland respected overseas.2

The Cromwellian past, however, was not as suitable for mythictreatment as some might have thought. In order for a national orimperial myth to succeed, it must unite a wide variety of opinionbehind a common image of the past, thereby defining the nation'spurpose and strengthening its resolve. It was precisely here thatCromwell was bound to fail. As the controversy over his statuedemonstrates, neither Conservatives nor the Irish were preparedto rally behind a vision of the past that was Cromwellian. Longdedicated to a tradition of Church and king, Tories would hardlyendorse the man who had condoned the executions of Charles Iand Archbishop Laud. No matter how strenuously Cromwell'sdefenders might apologize for his conduct in Ireland, the Irishwould never forget the horrors of Drogheda and Wexford. Roseberyhimself knew how divisive the Cromwellian past could be, for in histercentenary address he deliberately sidestepped Cromwell's partin the king's death and his policies in Ireland.3

But if the Cromwellian myth failed to enlist the whole nation, itcertainly appealed to a wide range of Liberal opinion. Unionistsand imperialists, spokesmen for democracy and toleration.Nonconformists, broad Churchmen and free thinkers all agreedthat modern England was in some way Cromwellian. When S. R.Gardiner declared in his Ford Lectures, delivered at Oxford in 1896,that Cromwell "stands forth as the typical Englishman of themodern world," he spoke for many of his Liberal contemporaries.4But even here, among Cromwell's admirers, invoking theProtector's name did not always produce unity of purpose. Byequating Cromwellian and Victorian England, Liberals transferredto the past questions of national identity, ensuring that the debateover Cromwell's achievement would become inextricably linked to

2 Rosebery, "Cromwell," 83-89. For the emergence of other myths during the lateVictorian years, see David Cannadine, "The Context, Performance and Meaning ofRitual: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition,' c. 1820-1977," in EricHobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1983), 120-138.

3 Rosebery, "Cromwell," 80-82.4 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Cromwell's Place in History, second edition (London: Longmans,

Green, and Co., 1897), 113.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 187

a debate over the condition of England. Confusing past and presentin this way could only produce discord, for Liberals were not onlydeeply split over contemporary issues, they were divided on historyas well. Cromwell's Puritanism, his relations with Parliament andthe army, his policies in Ireland and abroad were all controversialand not likely to occasion agreement.

The late Victorian appreciation of the Cromwellian past owedmuch to the spirit of international rivalry that flourished afterBismarck's unification of Germany, and to the enthusiasm forempire that followed Disraeli's decision to crown Victoria Empressof India. Reflecting back after almost twenty years on this cult ofCromwell, John Morley noted how it had grown out of the needsof an imperialistic age. Cromwell, he observed in his Recollections,"became a name on an Imperialist flag. It fell in with some of thenotions of the day about representative government, the beneficentactivities of a busy State, the virtue of the Strong Man, and theHero for Ruler." Cromwell's memory, Morley continued, "diffuseda subtle tendency to deify Violence, Will, Force, even War. It wasthe day of Bismarck." An editorial in The Times, written during theBoer War and commenting on the opposition to the Cromwellstatue, corroborated Morley's observation: it was "scarcelycredible," the columnist lamented, that Cromwell's "pre-eminentgreatness as a ruler and a warrior should be contested in these daysof militant Imperialism."3

The historian who best adapted the Cromwellian past to theneeds of the imperialistic age was John Robert Seeley. RegiusProfessor of Modern History at Cambridge, Seeley wrote twoinfluential works of international history: the Expansion of England, aseries of lectures published in 1883 that did much to popularize theempire, and the Growth of British Policy, published posthumously in1895. Seeley was both an imperialist and a defender of England'sunion with Ireland. An early member of the Imperial FederationLeague, he broke with Gladstone in 1886 over Irish Home Rule,joining the Liberal Unionist party and campaigning in support of itscandidates. In many ways, Seeley was representative of those

5 Morley, Recollections, 2: 49. The Times, 1 November 1899, 9.

188 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

intellectuals who grew disillusioned with Gladstonian Liberalismafter the Home Rule debacle. The Unionist critique of Gladstone'sstatesmanship - a critique also shared by those Liberal Imperialistswho coalesced around Rosebery in the 1890s - was more than adenunciation of Home Rule. At heart it reflected a deepeningdissatisfaction with English democracy as it had developedfollowing the Reform Act of 1867. According to these Liberal intel-lectuals, the true statesman should stand above sectional divisionsand govern for the benefit of the nation as a whole. When itappeared that Gladstone was prepared to sacrifice the nationalinterest simply to win the support of the Irish, they grewdisillusioned. Liberalism, they now insisted, should move away fromits Gladstonian preoccupation with sectional causes such as Welshdisestablishment, Irish Home Rule or franchise reform, andembrace issues of genuinely national importance. Imperialismand efficiency became their two most celebrated slogans. Theyadvocated the consolidation of the existing empire, rather than itsexpansion, placing particular emphasis on the areas of whitesettlement, and they demanded "national efficiency," implying thatthe well-being of the state should take precedence over the rights ofindividual citizens.6

In the Expansion of England, Seeley argued strenuously for a newapproach to the past that would be more appropriate for the age ofempire. The study of English history, he urged, should connect past,present and future. It should identify large patterns of develop-ment, indicate the direction of England's destiny, and provideguidance for statesmen who were looking to the future. Reflectingback over the last three hundred years, Seeley declared that theexpansion of England, the "extension of the English name intoother countries of the globe, the foundation of Greater Britain,"was the general tendency on which the study of history shouldfocus.7 With this claim, Seeley proposed nothing less than a radical

6 Deborah Wormell, Sir John Seeley and the Uses of History (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1980), 154-180. R. T. Shannon, "John Robert Seeley and the Idea of a NationalChurch," in Robert Robson, ed., Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in Honour ofGeorgeKitson Clark (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967), 255-267. John Roach, "Liberalismand the Victorian Intelligentsia," Cambridge Historical Journal, 12 (1957): 58-81. H. C. G.Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists: The Ideas and Politics of a Post-Gladstonian Elite (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1973), 125-149.

7 John Robert Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (London: Macmillanand Co., 1914), 9.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 189shift in the way English history was conceived. Previously,historians had concentrated on those domestic developmentsleading to the growth of liberty and democracy. But for Seeley, thisconventional approach was wholly inadequate since neither libertynor democracy could provide direction for the future. Liberty hadalready been acquired in the seventeenth century, while democracywas an insignificant development of the nineteenth. What was mostinstructive for the future was the growth of English power that hadculminated in the Victorian empire. If England was to survive inthe age of great powers, then Englishmen must come to regardthis empire, especially Canada, South Africa and Australia, as anintegral part of themselves, not as separate colonial possessionsthat could be discarded at will. In order to encourage this newappreciation of the empire, Seeley intended to show that thehistory of England was the story of its expansion.8

As Seeley conceived of English history, the hundred yearsstretching from the defeat of the Armada in 1588 to the Revolutionof 1688 represented a period of transition, as the religious concernsof the Reformation gave way gradually to the commercial con-siderations of the contemporary world. The Elizabethan agemarked the beginning of England's modern period, for it was Drakeand Raleigh who first recognized their country's potential as amaritime power. The seventeenth century saw the consolidation ofEngland's navy and the first movements toward colonization in thenew world. After the Revolution, England finally emerged asthe world's foremost commercial and industrial state, capable ofaccumulating a vast overseas empire. Interpreted within thisframework, the Civil War took on new meaning: it was importantnot because it gave rise to free institutions, but because it pushedEngland along its modern course as a world power, and themomentous event of the period was not the execution of the king,but Cromwell's decision to wage war against Spain, which resultedin the conquest of Jamaica.9

Seeley's Expansion of England and Growth of British Policy containedperhaps the most innovative reinterpretation of the Cromwellianpast that the Victorians would see. Cromwell's achievement wasrevolutionary, Seeley argued, because it transformed England intoa military state that would become under the Protectorate a "first

8 Ibid., 1-3, 8-10, 86-89, 138-140. 9 Ibid., 91-102, 120-128, 130-137.

190 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

sketch of the British Empire."10 For Seeley, Cromwell was the greatsoldier whose victories in Scotland and Ireland fused the threekingdoms together as the core of Greater Britain. He was theruler who dismissed the Long Parliament and established anauthoritarian regime capable of conducting a bold and decisiveforeign policy. He was the great European statesman who forged aProtestant alliance against Spain and encouraged England'scolonial development. In contrast to the early Stuarts, whosepolicies tended to be dynastic, Cromwell was a nationalistconcerned with promoting the greatness of England. His approachto Europe and the new world thus developed further the moderntendencies which first appeared during the Elizabethan age, and itanticipated the imperial power that England would become in theeighteenth century.11 In making these claims, Seeley was chartingnew ground. He rejected Carlyle's interpretation, which hadpresented Cromwell as the Puritan hero building a GodlyCommonwealth, as well as Macaulay's, which had stressedCromwell's efforts to restore constitutional government. ForSeeley, Cromwell's Puritanism was important only because it gaveforce and direction to his foreign policy, and his attempt atconstitutional government was important only to the extent that itaffected his ability to execute this policy.

Seeley believed that history should provide statesmen withguidance, and by identifying Cromwell as one of the founders ofGreater Britain, he suggested that the Cromwellian past hadlessons to teach. Indeed, his interpretation of the Protectorate hadan unmistakable tendency to exalt the Cromwellian state alongwith its authoritarian and military attributes. Cromwell, it implied,would never have implemented his national policy, uniting thethree kingdoms and contributing to England's colonial expansion,without the backing of an invincible army and navy, and without theautocratic control necessary to formulate a consistent policy andcarry it out decisively. But Seeley never intended to set Cromwellup as a model for emulation. Victorian England was not an empirein the sense that the Protectorate was, and nowhere did Seeleysuggest that it should become one. Rather, he believed that

10 John Robert Seeley, The Growth of British Policy: An Historical Essay (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1895), 2: 63.

11 Ibid., 2: 1-100. Seeley, Expansion of England, 129-137.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 191Cromwell's imperialism was "unsound." Military states requirewar in order to survive; their armies must be satisfied, and theirsubjects must enjoy victory if they are to submit easily to dictator-ship. These states might bring "glory" and "ascendancy," but onlyat the cost of "liberty" and "wealth." Had Cromwell lived longer,England might have embarked on a European war that wouldhave postponed the development of constitutional liberty andimpoverished the nation.12

But if Victorian England was in many ways more fortunate thanthe Protectorate, Seeley's history implied that in the futurecircumstances might possibly arise that would force the state toassume a more Cromwellian aspect. The seventeenth century hadbeen an age of military states, of which Cromwell's was the bestorganized and most powerful. Under the old colonial system, warand commerce were indistinguishable since all the empires wereclosed monopolies and waging war was the only way a state couldexpand its trade.13 The nineteenth century, on the other hand, wasan age of economic liberalism in which states traded freely. Warwas no longer the indispensable counterpart of commerce, and themilitary state was no longer a necessity. But for Seeley, there wasnothing permanent in this arrangement, and an age of commercialliberalism could degenerate into war. In such circumstances,England would be compelled once again to take on some of thecharacteristics of the military state in order to guarantee itspreservation, even though individual and constitutional libertiesmight be sacrificed. Nor would readers in the 1890s, a time ofheightened international tension, have considered this a remotepossibility. Seeley had demonstrated clearly that England'sstanding as a great power depended on the consolidation of itsempire. He had shown what the building of that empire hadentailed from the Elizabethan age through the Victorian, and theexample of Cromwell indicated how that empire might best defendits interests in the future.

The union of England and Ireland, which Cromwell had donemuch to secure, was a crucial step in the making of Greater Britain.But in neither of his works did Seeley actually argue the case for

12 Seeley, Expansion of England, 51, 127, 132-134, 155-156, Growth of British Policy, 2: 87-88,98-100.

13 Seeley, Expansion of England, 127-130.

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Cromwell's Irish policies. That task fell to another exponent ofempire, James Anthony Froude. In his English in Ireland, Froudepresented a defense of Cromwell that would have been familiar toany reader of Carlyle. The Cromwellian settlement was justifiable,he insisted, because it had benefited Ireland. For Froude, the Irishwere simply incapable of governing themselves. War and anarchyhad long been endemic to the land as the native chiefs routinelyplundered their countrymen. The Irish insurrection of 1641 was onlythe most extreme instance of this anarchy, and its atrocitiesexcused Cromwell's future conquest. Whereas the Irish rebels hadslaughtered "the weak, the sick, and the helpless," Cromwell hadcomplied with the rules of war when he executed the defenders ofDrogheda and Wexford. Nor were Cromwell's actions withouthumanity. The examples of Drogheda and Wexford, horrible asthey were, prevented further bloodshed by breaking Ireland's will toresist. The Cromwellian settlement finally put an end to Ireland'sdebilitating anarchy, laying the foundations for prosperity,depriving the Irish chiefs of their lands, and replacing them withindustrious English and Scottish Protestants. Rebels werepunished, an insurgent Catholicism was outlawed, a diligentProtestantism encouraged. For Froude, then, Cromwell rep-resented the model governor of Ireland, one who "meant to ruleIreland for Ireland's good." He brought justice to the Irish people,established law and order, freed them from oppression, andbrought prosperity. His methods may have been coercive, but, saidFroude, the Irish "respect a master hand, though it be a hard anda cruel one." Had Cromwell's policies been given time, Froudepredicted confidently, they would have solved England's Irishproblem.14

This image of Cromwell as the statesman who dictated justice toIreland complemented Seeley's interpretation of the Cromwellianpast as one of the formative moments in the expansion of England,and together they appealed to an age when England's securityseemed to depend on consolidating the empire and retaining theunion with Ireland. When they held up Cromwell as a model, bothSeeley and Froude were endorsing an alternative to the Liberalstatesmanship that had become discredited after Gladstone's

14 James Anthony Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (London: Longmans,Green, and Co., 1887), 1: 91, 133-134, 139-140, 145-149, 150-155.

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decision to embrace Home Rule. For both Seeley and Froude,Cromwell was a nationalist who placed the interests of the stateabove the rights of its constituents, who stressed the primacy ofexecutive authority, and who denied weak nations the right togovern themselves. For Seeley, Cromwell became one of the threegreat heroes of England's early expansion because he actedindependently of Parliament, establishing a military dictatorship,while for Froude, Cromwell effectively governed Ireland because hechose to coerce the Irish rather than placate them. This image ofCromwell as the great statesman spoke directly to the anxietiesof late Victorian England, its confident nationalism appealingespecially to those imperialists and unionists who had rejectedGladstone's leadership, finding it excessively sentimental andinappropriate for an age of international politics based onrelationships of power.

11

Throughout the Victorian period, Cromwell's most devotedadmirers were often found among the traditional Nonconformingdenominations. William Godwin's History of the Commonwealth, JohnForster's Statesmen of the Commonwealth and Robert Vaughan's manyvolumes on the Stuarts all attest to the persistent fascination whichthe Puritan past held for Nonconformity during the first half of thenineteenth century. Thomas Carlyle's edition of Cromwell's lettersand speeches focused attention specifically on Cromwell, enablingNonconformists to present the great Puritan as a Christian hero, aprecursor of the contemporary Dissenter, one who had contributedsignificantly to the making of modern England. This tendencyto look to the Cromwellian past for inspiration and guidancecontinued well into the 1890s. The major tercentenary celebrations,held at London, Cambridge and Huntingdon, were almostexclusively Nonconformist affairs. During the heavily attendedLondon ceremony, David Lloyd George, Baptist member ofParliament for the Carnarvon Boroughs and future prime minister,declared that he "believed in Oliver Cromwell because he was agreat fighting Dissenter," thereby emphasizing the connectionbetween Cromwell and contemporary Nonconformity. AnotherDissenting member of Parliament, the Methodist R. W. Perks, waseven more explicit: "the modern equivalent of the 17th century

194 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Puritan," he told his audience, "was the possessor of the Non-conformist conscience, who now raised his voice against thedesecration of the Lord's Day, against the gambling saloon, thedrink bar, the haunt of vice, and the overwhelming power of bruteforce in home and foreign affairs."15

Late Victorian Nonconformists, like their predecessors, routinelypaid tribute to Cromwell's efforts to establish liberty in England.According to the Congregationalist divine E. Paxton Hood,Cromwell was the devout Puritan who led England in its battleagainst tyranny and persecution: "The sword of Cromwell," Hooddeclared in a popular biography, "alone gave victory to the peopleover the king . . . Had not those victories been obtained, this landwould have been at the feet of a cold and cruel tyrant." R. F.Horton, a fellow Congregationalist, defined Cromwell's "task" insimilarly liberal terms: "The power of an ancient throne had to belimited, and in order to be limited, it had first to be broken; theprinciple of religious liberty had to be brought from the regionof abstract speculation, in which it had been born, into the field ofpractical politics."16 But if these divines continued the Dissentingpractice of celebrating the Puritan contribution to liberty, they nowput it to a different use. The earlier generation of Nonconformistshad used the Stuart past rhetorically to force open an exclusivelyAnglican political system and to transform a confessional into anonsectarian state. By the end of the century, however, Dissenterswere no longer so preoccupied with constitutional change, as theBurial Act of 1880 had redressed the last of their traditionalgrievances, and as their interest in English disestablishment beganto diminish.17 Instead of using the Puritan past to affirm their rightto participate in national politics, late Victorian Nonconformiststended to exhibit Cromwell as a model of Christian morality inpublic life.

In contrast to earlier Dissenting historians, who had invoked theseventeenth-century past in order to convince a wide audience ofthe legitimacy of their claims, the late Victorians addressed their

15 The Times, 26 April 1899, 12. The Times, 28 April 1899, 8.16 E. Paxton Hood, Oliver Cromwell: His Life, Times, Battlefields, and Contemporaries (New York:

Funk and Wagnalls, 1883), 14-15, 225. R. F. Horton, Oliver Cromwell: A Study in PersonalReligion (New York: Thomas Whittaker, 1897), 5.

17 D. W. Bebbington, The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870-igi4 (London:George Allen and Unwin, 1982), 18—36.

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remarks mostly to fellow Nonconformists. As their leaders becamemore deeply involved in politics after the Reform Act of 1867, manyNonconformists began to question whether political activity, givenits secular character, was appropriate for Christians who should bedevoting their time to spiritual matters.18 In answer to their critics,political Nonconformists appealed to Cromwell, the greatestactivist in the history of Dissent, hoping to establish the legitimacyof their endeavors. Horton, for instance, dedicated his Cromwellto the "Young Free Churchmen of England," encouraging them tolearn from his subject's example: "You need Cromwell. He is theman of the hour for you. Your work for England and the world, if itis to be done, must be done precisely as he did his." Sir RichardTangye, Quaker industrialist and collector of Cromwelliana,directed his Two Protectors at the same "rising generation ofNonconformists," and with a similar intention of rousing them toaction because "the spirit of Laud was still rampant in certainquarters."19 A call to arms also featured in the speeches deliveredat the Cromwell tercentenary. Adapting Wordsworth's sonnet toMilton, Horton declared, "Cromwell, thou shouldst be living atthis hour; England hath need of thee," while the Methodist SilasHocking asserted that "Cromwell was ahead of his time in insistingthat religion had to do with politics . . . as much as with church-going." David Lloyd George, agreeing with Hocking, proclaimedCromwell "the first statesman to recognize that as soon as theGovernment became a democracy the Churches became directlyresponsible for any misgovernment."20

18 Ibid., 25-30. Stephen Koss, Nonconformity in Modern British Politics (Hamden, Connecticut:Archon Books, 1975), 21—23.

19 Horton, Cromwell, v-vi. Sir Richard Tangye, The Two Protectors: Oliver and Richard Cromwell(S. W. Partridge and Co., 1899), 214-215.

20 The Times, 26 April 1899, 12. Wordsworth's poem, entitled "London, 1802," began:MILTON! thou should'st be living at this hour:England hath need of thee: she is a fenOf stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,Have forfeited their ancient English dowerOf inward happiness. We are selfish men;Oh! raise us up, return to us again;And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

The poem, which calls on its muse - Milton in the original, Cromwell in Horton'srendering - to restore morality and strength to a spiritually barren England, capturesnicely the mood in which late Victorian Nonconformists approached the seventeenthcentury.

196 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

In order to make the case that Cromwell's life justified politicalactivity, Nonconformists had to demonstrate that his public careerwas an expression of his Christian piety. Taking their insights fromCarlyle, they all stressed that Cromwell was a sincere Puritandrawn into political activity, often against his will, by the strengthof his religious belief. Cromwell assumed a public role, hisNonconformist biographers maintained, not out of worldlyambition, nor out of a desire for temporal gain, but because of hisduty to God. As Horton summed up Cromwell's life, quoting fromhis last Protectorate speech: Cromwell was "the most human ofmen, tender, passionate in his tenderness, who would havepreferred to live 'under his own woodside,' cherishing wife andchildren, loved by rustic neighbours; but [he was] driven to 'treadthe paths of glory, and to sound the depths and shoals of honour' byno choice of ambition but by the stern voice of God."21 Cromwell'spolitical activity, then, was a direct response to a divine call. ForCromwell to have turned his back on the public, remaining aprivate individual concerned only with saving his soul, would havebeen unthinkable. By implication, Horton's study of Cromwell'sreligion made it clear to his Nonconformist readers that they toorisked disobeying the "stern voice of God" if they avoided thepublic responsibilities of their faith.

Spokesmen for Nonconformity went even further, invoking theCromwellian past in their attempt to define the meaning ofChristian politics. During the final decades of the century, as theymoved beyond their earlier preoccupation with constitutionalchange, Nonconformists began to demand that purity in publiclife generally associated with the "Nonconformist conscience."22

Believing that statesmen should be virtuous, they denouncedParnelFs adultery and Rosebery's racehorses; believing thatgovernment should improve the nation's moral tone, they foughtfor social reform, such as the elimination of gambling, drunkennessand prostitution, and for a Christian policy abroad. In both theseareas, the Cromwellian past became rhetorically useful sinceCromwell could be portrayed as a virtuous statesman, the standardagainst which contemporary politicians could be measured andfound wanting. Nonconformist biographers, taking their lead fromCarlyle once again, tended to present Cromwell's religion in moral

21 Horton, Cromwell, 200-201. 22 Bebbington, Nonconformist Conscience, 11-17.

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rather than doctrinal terms. According to the radical Congre-gationalist J. Allanson Picton, for example, what distinguishedCromwell's Puritanism from other varieties of Christian belief "wasnot so much a set of theological opinions as a spiritual temper anda moral tone."23 In contrast to their vilification of the adultererParnell, Nonconformists praised Cromwell as the virtuous familyman, "cherishing wife and children, loved by rustic neighbours."24

When Salisbury refused to intervene on behalf of the ArmenianChristians massacred by the Turks in 1896, Nonconformistsreferred to Cromwell, who had championed the Protestants of theVaudois against the ravages of the Duke of Savoy, as the author ofa truly Christian foreign policy: "if [Cromwell] had been with usthese last ten years," declared the Quaker Rendel Harris at theCromwell tercentenary at Huntingdon, "he would have stood amagnificent chance of being made 'Archduke of Armenia,' for hewould never have stood still to see Christianity wiped out of AsiaMinor whilst statesmen washed their hands of the responsibility."25

A Christian and a Nonconformist, a politician whose private faithand public conduct were compatible because they answered asingle divine command, a leader who was morally incorruptibleand committed to Christian policies at home and abroad - thisCromwell was ideally suited to the rhetorical needs of lateVictorian Nonconformists. To them it made little differencethat Cromwell dealt summarily with his Parliaments, that hisgovernment was no more than a military dictatorship, thathis commitment to civil and religious liberty was imperfect, that hisPuritanism was narrow and unpopular, that his foreign policiesthreatened to bankrupt the nation. These and the many otherproblems surrounding Cromwell's career were simply passed overin silence. Nonconformists saw in Cromwell a compelling figurecapable of providing England with inspiration and guidance. Butunlike the imperialist Cromwell, the Nonconformist version wasnarrowly sectarian and not likely to appeal to a wide audience. APuritan above all, this Cromwell would never inspire thoseVictorians who found his moralistic Christianity distasteful, who

23 J. Allanson Picton, Oliver Cromwell: The Man and His Mission (New York: Cassell, Petter,Galpin and Co., [1882]), 12.

24 Ibid., 34. Hood, Cromwell, 42-43. Horton, Cromwell, 12-13, 44-45.25 The Times, 28 April 1899, 8.

198 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

regarded its demands on human nature as unreasonable, and whodenied its applicability to contemporary politics. Not surprisingly,outsiders accused the Nonconformists of having monopolized theCromwell tercentenary, of having "turned it into a sectarianinstead of a national or even municipal movement."26

in

No historian did more to shape the late Victorian understanding ofthe Cromwellian past than Samuel Rawson Gardiner. Whetherthey agreed with him or not, most contemporary biographers ofCromwell measured their interpretations against the standardof Gardiner's work. The imperialist J. R. Seeley valued Gardiner'sopinion so highly that he asked Gardiner to comment on the earlydrafts of his Growth of British Policy, and the Nonconformist R. F.Horton thought the best biography of Cromwell could be foundscattered throughout Gardiner's various works. Before turning hisattention to the Puritan Revolution, Gardiner had spent nearlythirty years preparing himself for the task, studying the origins ofthe Civil War and presenting his research in a ten-volume Historyof England that began with the death of Elizabeth and ended withthe outbreak of war in 1642. Gardiner had always intended to carrythis narrative through the Restoration, and during the last twodecades of his life, he worked steadily at his task. The Great CivilWar and the Commonwealth and Protectorate brought the story up to1656, but this was as far as Gardiner would get. A stroke in 1901,followed by his death in 1902, put an end to the project. Nor didthese volumes represent the full extent of Gardiner's achievementas a historian of the Puritans. He was invited in 1896 to deliver theFord Lectures at Oxford, where he spoke on Cromwell's Place inHistory, and he published a popular biography of Cromwell in 1900.

The work that exercised the greatest influence on Gardiner'sconception of the Cromwellian past was Thomas Carlyle's editionof Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. Reviewing Carlyle's HistoricalSketches when they appeared posthumously in 1898, Gardiner paidtribute to the earlier work. The Letters and Speeches, he declared,"was more than a book. It was an historical event, changing ourwhole conception of English history in its most heroic period."

26 Ibid., 8.

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We may [he continued] be somewhat weary now of the ejaculations inter-mixed amongst the Protector's speeches, or of the outbursts about apes ofthe Dead Sea and the like, which are served up as sauce for the letters. Forall that, what Carlyle had to say was not only far more true than anythingsaid before he arose, but even now - with all that we have learnt since,there is scarcely anything that needs to be swept away, though there ismuch that needs qualification.27

As his review made clear, Gardiner valued highly Carlyle's attemptto reappraise Cromwell's achievement and in particular to dispelpopular myths and misconceptions by allowing the Protector tospeak for himself. Like Carlyle, Gardiner too saw Cromwell as anhonest and sincere Puritan, concerned more with religion thanpolitics, whose chief motivation was not personal ambition, butrather the desire to place England's institutions on a Godly basis.28

For both historians, Cromwell was above all the best example ofEnglish Puritanism in the seventeenth century. But while Gardinermay have agreed with Carlyle on many points of interpretation,he rejected his predecessor's hero-worship, considering it a"stumbling-block in [the] pursuit of historical truth."29 If Gardinerfound much to praise in Puritanism, he also knew that there wasmuch to lament, and he acknowledged readily what Carlyle hadadmitted only with reluctance: that Cromwell and the Puritanshad failed to remake England in their own image, and thatCromwell's attempt to settle the nation's institutions in a lastingway had not attained success.

Gardiner is often regarded as one of England's first objectivehistorians, a professional immersed in the sources who refused toallow contemporary political debate to color his interpretations.And yet a reading of his work on the Cromwellian past shows thatthis was hardly the case. Despite his insistence that Cromwellshould be judged only in the context of the seventeenth century,Gardiner himself was never wholly free from the vice of present-mindedness. As we might expect, Gardiner's historical judgmentswere consistent with the political positions he had developed over

27 [Samuel Rawson Gardiner], "A New Book by Carlyle," The Daily News, 28 November 1898,7-

28 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649, new edition (London:Longmans, Green and Co., 1893-1894), 1: viii, x.

29 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Review of F. Harrison's Oliver Cromwell, Academy, 34 (28 July1888): 48.

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the preceding thirty years. He was certainly aware of how spokes-men for Nonconformity and the empire were using Cromwell, andbeing an advocate of neither cause, he dismissed the lessons theydrew from the past. In the first place, Gardiner's Liberalism ledhim to reject the Cromwell eulogized by the Nonconformists. Aliberal nationalist like Gardiner, one who was seeking broad areasof consensus on which to build national unity, could hardly approveof Cromwell's attempt to impose a narrow Puritanism. No matterhow tolerant Cromwell himself might have been, his desire tocreate a Godly Commonwealth could only produce the kind ofsectarian divisions that Gardiner was trying to overcome. Norshould we expect an advocate of representative government likeGardiner to disregard the way Cromwell defied the national will inhis determination to keep in power, by means of the army if needbe, an unpopular Puritan oligarchy. Gardiner's Liberalism also ledhim to reject the Cromwell celebrated by the imperialists andunionists. As an opponent of Disraeli's forward policy in the 1870sand of Salisbury's in the 1890s, and as a supporter of Irish HomeRule, Gardiner refused to see Cromwell's policies toward Irelandand the continent as a success story inviting emulation.

Like the Nonconformists, Gardiner believed that Cromwell wasa Puritan above all. Carlyle, if nothing else, had convinced hisVictorian readers that Cromwell's piety had been sincere and thathis words should be taken at face value since an honest Puritanwould hesitate to prevaricate before his God. These insights intoCromwell's religion allowed Gardiner to move beyond Hume'sassertion that Puritanism was simply a form of hypocrisy, a maskbehind which lurked base ambition. Taking Cromwell at his word,Gardiner concluded that he had been an "honest man" whose chiefaim was "to serve God and the people of God." Addressing thenature of Cromwell's Puritanism, Gardiner pointed out that it was"moral" rather than "intellectual," a "spiritual emotion" ratherthan a systematic creed. Cromwell was not a doctrinaire; he wasindifferent to the fine points of theology, and as a result he avoidedthe bigotry that characterized so many of the Puritans. Indeed,Cromwell would become one of the principal advocates of religioustoleration and it was the non-dogmatic quality of his faith whichwould enable him to surmount the obstacles that theologicaldifferences often placed between Protestants of opposing denomi-nations. "It was sufficient for him," Gardiner wrote, "if he and his

Cromwell and the late Victorians 201

associates found inspiration in a sense of personal dependence onGod, issuing forth in good and beneficent deeds."30 All these reflec-tions bore the clear imprint of Carlyle's understanding: for Carlylehad spoken of Cromwell's Puritanism in simple moral terms as anawareness of heaven and hell, a belief in a soul to be saved, andan imperative to do good rather than evil.

By focusing on his Puritanism, Gardiner was able to solvesome of the problems posed by Cromwell's apparent politicalinconsistencies. Religion, he insisted, not politics, provided the keyto Cromwell's career. A devout man with little aptitude forspeculative politics, Gardiner's Cromwell never took much of aninterest in constitutional issues. He was not especially enamored ofrepresentative institutions and he certainly had never been a truerepublican. He opposed the monarchy of Charles I, not because heobjected to monarchy in principle, but because Charles had thrownhis support behind a persecuting Church.31 Those interpretationsthat condemned Cromwell as a Parliamentarian who later betrayedthe cause in order to promote his own ambition simply missedthe point. Cromwell was a Puritan concerned most of all withachieving toleration for those Protestant sects that shared hisreligious convictions. He supported the Parliament in the CivilWar not because he adhered to any particular theory of politicalrights, but rather because he saw that toleration could never beachieved so long as Laud and Charles dominated the Church. AsGardiner explained: "Cromwell was not the man to indulge inconstitutional speculations, but he saw distinctly that if religion -such as he conceived it - was to be protected, it must be by armedforce."3*

But if Gardiner and the Nonconformists concurred on theimportance of Cromwell's Puritanism, they were at odds over itsimpact on his statesmanship. Unlike the Nonconformists, Gardinerreadily conceded that as a statesman Cromwell had failed. Whilehe successfully destroyed one set of institutions, he was unable tocreate an alternative that would endure beyond the Restoration.Seeking an explanation for this failure, Gardiner parted company

30 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Oliver Cromwell, new impression (London: Longmans, Greenand Co., 1925), 2, 7, 64—67, Great Civil War, 1: 310.

31 G a r d i n e r , Cromwell, 8 , 10, 16-17, 89,5 Cromwell's Place in History, 23 , 27, 46 .32 Gardiner, Cromwell, 25-26.

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with the Nonconformists and pointed to Cromwell's faith. ThoughPuritanism may have been the source of Cromwell's strength andinspiration, it was also his greatest liability. For Gardiner recog-nized that Puritanism could never provide an adequate basis onwhich to reconstruct the nation. To the extent that Cromwellremained a Puritan, he was destined to fail as a statesman since thePuritanism of the Independents was too narrowly conceived tosecure the support of the English people. Its ideas about liberty,democracy and toleration, while admirable from the Victorianpoint of view, were too far ahead of their time to win popularapproval. It was culturally narrow, and it was often ignorant andfanatical. But most of all, its moral earnestness demanded toomuch from its adherents and failed to take into account thelimitations of human nature. In his History of England, Gardiner hadwarned that one of the dangers with Puritanism was its willingnessto coerce the world into morality. Cromwell, animated by an urgeto transform England into a Godly Commonwealth, was a case inpoint. His attempt to enforce a Puritan morality infuriated hiscontemporaries and converted the royalist opposition into anational movement.33 Puritanism, as royalists like Hyde realized,was simply "incapable of giving permanent guidance to thenation."34

Though Gardiner's Cromwell was capable at times of risingabove this vulgar Puritanism, he was never wholly free of it. Inan article on "Cromwell's Constitutional Aims," written for theContemporary Review in 1900, Gardiner argued that Cromwell'sPuritanism provided the one constant factor that rendered intelli-gible the bewildering variety of his constitutional experiments.When he turned against the monarchy and the Church, Gardinernow suggested, Cromwell had something more constructive inmind than eliminating absolutism and persecution. He hoped aboveall to convert the nation to Puritanism by maintaining in power a"Puritan oligarchy" that would win the support of the people by itsbeneficent reforms. Once it was acknowledged that the creation ofa Godly Commonwealth was Cromwell's principal objective, then

33 Gardiner, Great Civil War, 2: 329—330,3:119-120,4: 327, Cromwell, 161,164, 262-263,316-318.Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1640-1656, newedition (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1903), 4: 40.

34 Gardiner, Great Civil War, 3: 123.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 203

all his constitutional experiments made sense.35 Cromwelldismissed the Long Parliament not merely because it had ceased torepresent the will of the nation, but because its members had cometo place their interests before the cause of God. He agreed toreplace the Long Parliament with a new governing body, chosenby the army from among the Godly, in order to put his Puritanoligarchy into power. When the Nominated Parliament failed torule as he wished, Cromwell gave his consent to the Instrument ofGovernment. This constitution, which provided the basis for theProtectorate, guaranteed that Cromwell's Puritan oligarchy, nowembodied in the Protector and his council, would exercise almostunlimited executive authority. Attempting to replicate thisoligarchic arrangement on the local level, Cromwell established asystem of Major Generals, Puritan officers who imposed Godly ruleon the counties. When the Humble Petition and Advice returnedpower to Parliament, Cromwell urged the creation of an upperhouse, hoping that his oligarchy might endure within its ranks.36

The lasting consequence of this effort to create a GodlyCommonwealth was to increase Cromwell's dependence on thearmy. The Puritan Revolution, extending from the Long Parlia-ment through the Protectorate, transferred power to a smaller andsmaller group of Puritans as supporters of a modified Anglicanismgave way to Presbyterians, Independents and finally, during theNominated Parliament, Fifth Monarchists. As the governmentbecame increasingly elitist and unpopular, it was driven to rely onthe army, the one steadfastly Puritan force in England, in order toensure its survival.37 For Gardiner, England's transformation into amilitary state during the Commonwealth and Protectorate was theone development that refuted absolutely all those who pronouncedCromwell's Puritan statesmanship a success. Although the armymight destroy tyranny, it could not replace tyranny with a govern-ment founded on liberty. Its notorious disregard for Parliamentaryprocedures, its willingness to interfere in politics at the slightestprovocation, and the unpopular levels of taxation necessary for itsupkeep all guaranteed that Cromwell's government would never

35 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "Cromwell's Constitutional Aims," Contemporary Review, 77(January, 1900): 134.

36 I b id . , 133-142. G a r d i n e r , Commonwealth and Protectorate•, 2: 2 2 8 - 2 3 1 , 251-265 .37 G a r d i n e r , Great Civil War, 3 : 352, 2 8 9 - 2 9 0 , 3 0 4 - 3 0 5 , Commonwealth and Protectorate, 2:

266-267, 329, 339-341.

204 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

relinquish power to the freely elected representatives of thenation.38 On numerous occasions, Gardiner pointed out inCromwell's defense that he had never desired military rule and thathe had always planned to restore civilian government.39 But theunpopularity of Puritanism made this impossible. DespiteCromwell's best intentions, the Protectorate began as andremained a military despotism.

Of all Cromwell's policies, it was his exploits overseas thatappealed to the imagination of an imperialistic age and won thegreatest respect from Gardiner's contemporaries. And yet, forGardiner, the admiration of the imperialists was as misplaced asthat of the Nonconformists. Like Seeley, whose Expansion of Englandhe drew on, Gardiner believed that Cromwell's foreign policy wasbalanced uneasily between the old and the new, between a Puritanidealism better suited to the age of religious war that had endedwith the Treaty of Westphalia, and a materialism appropriate forthe age of commercial rivalry that was just beginning.40 At its best,Cromwell's religious enthusiasm could lend his policies a nobilitythat was truly admirable - as when he championed the Protestantsof the Vaudois against their oppressor, the Duke of Savoy - butwhen religious and commercial interests coincided, they laidCromwell open to the charge of hypocrisy. As an example of this,Gardiner pointed to the proposal to wrest America from Spain. Topromote such a policy, as Cromwell did, on the grounds that itwould advance the Protestant cause seemed more than a littledisingenuous once it became clear that English commerce, andnot religion, stood to gain.41 Still more important, Cromwell'sPuritanism was an obstacle to the formulation of a meaningfulpolicy. Its anachronistic assumptions, more appropriate to the ageof Elizabeth, led him to misread diplomatic realities and inparticular to place undue emphasis on the struggle betweenProtestantism and Catholicism, which was no longer a decisivefactor in European diplomacy.42 But what disturbed Gardiner most

38 G a r d i n e r , Commonwealth and Protectorate, i: 1-2, 160, 2: 21, 3 3 8 - 3 3 9 , Cromwell, 164, 316.39 Gardiner, Great Civil War, 3: 226, 246, 328-329, Commonwealth and Protectorate, 2: 284, 3: 191,

209, 247, 4: 77, Cromwell, 88-89, IQ8> 196—197, 213-215, 227, 247-248, Cromwell's Place inHistory, 104-105.

40 G a r d i n e r , Commonwealth and Protectorate, 2: 150-152, 3 : 164-166 , 4: 120-121, Cromwell,265-266.

41 Gardiner, Cromwell, 269-272, 296-297, Commonwealth and Protectorate, 2: 150-151, 3: 48-51.42 G a r d i n e r , Commonwealth and Protectorate, 2 : 1 5 1 - 1 5 2 , 1 8 1 , 3 : 161 ,4 :122 , Cromwell, 265 , 2 9 7 - 2 9 8 .

Cromwell and the late Victorians 205about Cromwell's foreign policy was its domestic consequences.By committing England to such expensive ventures overseas,Cromwell was in fact undermining his attempt to restore civiliangovernment. To wage war against Catholic Europe was an immenseundertaking, and the high levels of taxation needed to finance sucha policy would only add to the Protectorate's unpopularity, makingit all the less likely that Cromwell would ever transfer authority toa freely elected Parliament.43

Turning to Cromwell's Irish policies, Gardiner found even less toapplaud. In answer to Froude, whose work on the Irish past hethought riddled with "misrepresentations,"44 Gardiner arguedthat the Cromwellian settlement could never have brought abouta successful resolution of the Anglo-Irish problem. After thecampaigns of Cromwell and Ireton had restored England'ssupremacy in Ireland, the Long Parliament passed the Act ofSettlement, which provided the basis for Cromwell's future policies.Had the Act been implemented thoroughly, Gardiner pointed out,it would have entailed the execution of approximately one hundredthousand Irish and the forced relocation of countless others. To saythe least, Gardiner found the act abhorrent: "No such deed ofcruelty," he declared, "was ever contemplated in cold blood by anyState with pretence to civilisation."45 Even if the Act had beenenforced beyond the Restoration, Gardiner denied that it wouldhave produced the desired result. Indeed, it too would have failedfor the very reason that all of England's policies in Ireland hadfailed - by relying on coercion and by displaying nothing but con-tempt for the Irish and their traditions, it fed an Irish nationalismthat would someday become unconquerable.46 Nor was the faultCromwell's alone. The Long Parliament had passed the Act ofSettlement in 1652, "before Cromwell was in a position to make hisweight felt," and though he implemented the Act with a zeal thatwas truly his own, the actual settlement had "little in it that wasnew," for it was largely a continuation of the policies of Elizabeth

43 Gardiner, Cromwell, 235-237, 264, 273, 295-296, 306-307. Samuel Rawson Gardiner,Review of J. R. Seeley's Growth of British Policy, English Historical Review, 11 (1896):160.

44 Samuel Rawson Gardiner, "Modern History," Contemporary Review, 33 (October, 1878):629.

43 Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, 4: 82.46 Ibid., 2: 129-130, 4: 80, 90. Gardiner, Cromwell's Place in History, 58-59.

206 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

and Wentworth. It was not Cromwell who failed in Ireland, butrather three generations of English statesmen.47

When Gardiner showed how Cromwell had failed to reconcilePuritanism with free institutions, becoming increasingly dependenton the army, he was demonstrating how unsuitable the Puritan pastwas as a model for contemporary politics. When he showed how thecost of Cromwell's foreign policy hindered the return to a freelyelected civilian administration, he was pointing out the dangersto democracy inherent in all empires. When he condemned theCromwellian settlement in Ireland because of its disregard for Irishtraditions, he was making it clear that a resolution of theIrish problem could only be based on a respect for Irish nationalaspirations. But Gardiner's intention was not to present a purelynegative portrait of the Protector, an example of the misguidedstatesmanship a Liberal should avoid. It was Gardiner, after all,who had termed Cromwell the "typical Englishman of the modernworld," implying the presence of strengths as well as weaknesses. Athis best, Cromwell could also provide a model of what Liberalstatesmanship should entail. The capacity to comprehend whatwas best for the nation as a whole, to see beyond the personal ordynastic, the local or sectarian, distinguished Cromwell fromCharles and represented a crucial element in any successful state-craft, past or present.

Victorian Liberals had always placed religious toleration at thetop of their agenda. Confronted with a society fragmented bysectarian strife, they stressed that a Christianity shorn of itsinessentials could provide the groundwork for national unity bybringing together opposing denominations. That Gardiner sharedthis ideal is clear enough. One of the purposes behind his earlierHistory of England had been to promote national unity by demon-strating how the liberal tendencies within England's Anglican andNonconforming traditions had worked together to create thetolerant atmosphere of modern-day England. Toleration played anequally important role in his interpretation of the Commonwealthand Protectorate. When he described Cromwell as a Puritan whosefaith was moral rather than dogmatic, Gardiner was advancing aninterpretation consistent with the aims of Victorian Liberalism.

47 Gardiner , Commonwealth and Protectorate•, 2: 130, 4: 79-80, 90-91, CromwelVs Place in History,57-58.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 207Indeed, with his portrait of Cromwell, Gardiner placed before theVictorians a precursor of the modern Liberal, one whose faith hadbeen reduced to the bare essentials of a belief in God and goodconduct, and one who consequently found denominational distinc-tions of little importance. By Victorian standards, Cromwell's ideaof toleration may have been inadequate since it embraced onlyProtestants, but it was as perfect as the circumstances of theseventeenth century would allow. Nondogmatic in matters ofreligion and as tolerant as was historically conceivable, Gardiner'sCromwell was, in the best sense of the term, a visionary because hehad understood long ago what the nineteenth century had only justrealized: that only toleration would end sectarian discord.

Cromwell also promoted the national interest by renouncing thedynastic considerations that had led Charles to look abroad forprotection. A desire to defend England against foreign influence,Gardiner suggested, informed all Cromwell's shifts in policy fromthe outbreak of the Civil War through his campaigns in Ireland andScotland. Whereas Parliament and the Presbyterians looked toScotland for help and the king turned indiscriminately to Scotland,Ireland and the continent, Cromwell and the Independents weredetermined to rely only on themselves. From the outset, Cromwellhad been uncomfortable with Parliament's decision to call on theScots, considering it at best an unpleasant expedient for beatingthe king. Then, as he dealt with the army, Parliament and the kingafter the first Civil War, his concern for the national interestremained dominant. He negotiated first with Parliament and thenwith the king, hoping in each instance to arrange a settlement thatwould bring peace to England. Only when these efforts failed did hejoin the radicals in the army and agree to the execution of the king.Where Cromwell's detractors saw in these maneuvers hypocrisyand opportunism, Gardiner discerned a consistent nationalpurpose. In each instance Cromwell gave up on negotiations oncehe discovered that first Parliament and then the king had conspiredwith the Scots for a second invasion. It was not republican senti-ment that prompted Cromwell to demand the king's trial, butrather his anger that Charles had been ready to "vassalise" thenation to Scotland in order to save his crown.48 Much certainly couldbe inveighed against the Cromwellian revolution, but this much

48 Gardiner, Great Civil War, 2: 23, 120, 177, 3: 265, 281-282, 287-290, 319-321, 4: 250-253, 328.

208 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Gardiner felt had to be said in its defense; with Cromwell and theIndependents, "England had in truth entered into possession ofherself."49

In his discussion of these events Gardiner stressed not onlyCromwell's nationalism, but also his essential conservatism. ForCromwell, as Gardiner represented him, shared with most English-men a traditionalism that was reflected in his respect for thenation's age-old institutions. As he struggled to settle the nation'saffairs after the first Civil War, Cromwell endeavored to retain asmuch of the old constitution as possible so as to avoid the radicalimplications of a military government. When the Levellers putforward their Agreement of the People, a revolutionary proposal for anEnglish republic based on democratic principles, Cromwell found it"distasteful" on account of its total disregard for past practice."Without any constitutional learning," Gardiner wrote, and "stillmore without any philosophical training, [Cromwell] instinctivelyturned against a proposal to cast the institutions of the country intothe melting pot, after the fashion practised by the makers ofmodern France a century and a half later." By linking the Levellerswith the French Revolutionaries of 1789, Gardiner implied thatCromwell and traditionalists like Burke stood together incondemning radical innovation based on abstract principles. TheLevellers may have been a revolutionary group operating outsidenational traditions, but Cromwell, the epitome of Puritanism, wasin fact an advocate of that "policy of bit-by-bit reform" whichwas the "characteristic feature in English political history."50

Even Cromwell's contempt for representative government couldbe reconciled with a liberal nationalism. In Cromwell's defense,Gardiner suggested that behind his apparent despotism a validpolitical principle was at work - a principle that connectedCromwell's statesmanship to the earlier practices of Bacon andStrafford, and to the later views of Victorian thinkers like FredericHarrison. "If the morality of Oliver's political actions are ever tobe judged fairly," Gardiner explained, "it must never be forgottenthat the right of an honest Government to prevent the peoplefrom injuring themselves by out-voting the saner members of

49 Ibid., 3: 191.50 Gardiner, Cromwell's Place in History, 24, 37-41, Cromwell, 112-123, Great Civil War, 3: 328,

380-391.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 209the community was . . . the predominant note of his career."51

Cromwell, as Gardiner often noted, had always been indifferentto representative government, and the intransigence of hisProtectorate Parliaments transformed this indifference intodistrust. Determined at all costs to preserve the gains of the CivilWar, and aware that the unpopularity of Puritanism ensured that afreely elected Parliament would reverse everything he hadachieved, Cromwell put his trust in government by an elite.52

Interpreted in this way, Cromwell became one in a series of states-men who rejected democracy on the grounds that the multitude,or its freely elected representatives, could not be trusted to dowhat was best for the nation. Bacon and Strafford, discouraged bythe myopia of representative assemblies, had both looked to astrong executive as the only way to carry through beneficent andfarsighted reforms. Similarly, Victorian critics like FredericHarrison shared with Strafford and Cromwell a suspicion thatdemocracy might prove incapable of governing in the nation'sinterest.53

Taken as a whole, Gardiner's interpretation demonstrates howthoroughly Cromwell's reputation had changed over the Victorianyears, for Gardiner's Cromwell was no longer the radical Dissenterwho, a century earlier, had inspired such fear. He was not an out-sider to English institutions intent on their destruction, nor was hethe hypocritical fanatic who used the language of Puritanism toconceal a carefully laid plan of self-aggrandizement. Rather, he wasan English patriot sympathetic to the nation's traditions, a devoutman whose sense of what was important in religion had allowed himto discern the outlines of the future solution to England's sectariandilemma. The tragedy of his career was that, despite his bestintentions, he was never able to free himself from dependence onthe army. And yet, despite his shortcomings, Cromwell was astatesman of considerable ability, one who tried to do what was bestfor the nation as a whole. Where Cromwell failed - as he did inIreland - he failed in ways in which the English had always failed.Cromwell was thus representative of the English nation: strong

51 Gardiner, Cromwell, 309-310.52 G a r d i n e r , Commonwealth and Protectorate•, 2: 2 8 3 - 2 8 4 , 3 3 9 - 3 4 0 , 3: 169-170, 253 -254 , 4 : 4 6 - 4 7 ,

77778.53 Ibid., 3: 253-254. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, Note on Wentworth's unpublished speech,

Academy, 7 (12 June 1874): 611.

210 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

where it was strong, weak where it was weak, the typicalEnglishman of the modern world. By presenting Cromwell inthese terms, Gardiner reversed much of the hostile rhetoric thathad tarnished Cromwell's reputation. Conservatives had longcondemned the line of Dissenters which began with Cromwell andthe Puritans on the grounds that they had opposed England'sfundamental institutions. The Puritan Revolution of 1649, Burkehad argued, like the French Revolution of 1789, stood condemnedbecause of its total break with the past. With his interpretation ofthe Commonwealth and Protectorate, Gardiner effectively turnedthis argument around, stressing the essential continuity ofCromwell's achievement with the course of English history, therebymaking the case for including the Puritan episode within theacceptable past.

But if the Puritan Revolution was an integral part of England'spast, Gardiner recognized that it was neither the whole of that pastnor its most important part. In his earlier work, Gardiner hadconceived of English history as the product of two competingcurrents, one Anglican and the other Puritan, that had collided inthe seventeenth century. Of these two, he knew that Puritanismwas the weaker. Like Carlyle, he realized that the Puritans hadfailed to remake England in their own image. After the Restoration,the Anglican current, representing the constructive side ofthe Laudian movement, would come to dominate, exerting theformative influence on England's historical development.54

Gardiner readily conceded that Puritanism was not the progressivemovement of the age, and at times he referred to it as a "back-water," a figure of speech remarkably similar to Matthew Arnold'scharacterization in Culture and Anarchy: "Puritanism," Arnold wrote,"was no longer [by the seventeenth century] the central current ofthe world's progress, it was a side stream crossing the centralcurrent and checking it."55 Like Gardiner, Arnold regarded Englishhistory as the product of competing Anglican and Puritantraditions. In terming Puritanism a "side stream," he clearly

54 G a r d i n e r , Cromwell's Place in History, 3 , 6 - 8 .55 The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed . R. H . Super (Ann Arbor: Univers i ty of

Michigan Press, 1965), 5: 175. Compare Arnold's description of Puritanism withGardiner's: "the Puritanism of the seventeenth century may fairly be regarded as a back-water, taking its course in a contrary direction to the general current of nationaldevelopment." CromweWs Place in History, 108-109.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 211intended to discredit the Puritan achievement. That Gardinermade a similar point suggests that he was in fact closer to liberalAnglicans like Arnold than to those Dissenters who, from mid-century onward, were describing Puritanism as the constructiveforce responsible for all that was best in English history. Gardiner'sunderstanding of the Puritan past, whatever else we might think ofit, was never narrowly sectarian.

Gardiner believed that much like the statesman, whose job it wasto transcend sectional divisions and govern in the interest of thenation, the historian should forge an interpretation of the pastthat was national in scope. For one whose formative years as aprofessional were the 1860s and 1870s, when sectarian controversiesdivided the nation, the reconciliation of Anglicanism and Dissentwas regarded as a precondition for the successful operation ofdemocracy. To remove the historical roots of those controversies bywriting a history of the Civil War that was broad enough tocomprehend England's Anglican and Puritan legacies became theprincipal impetus behind Gardiner's work as well as an essentialcharacteristic of his Liberalism. In his work on Cromwell, then,Gardiner set out to assess the Puritan achievement and to assign ita place in the making of modern England. It may have been lessthan its Dissenting champions claimed, it may in the long run havebeen less influential than the Anglican achievement, but all thesame Puritanism did accomplish something constructive forEngland. As an especially intense form of Protestantism, it had, inthe first place, made an enduring mark on the development of theEnglish character. Puritanism, Gardiner concluded, had impressedon English men and women "high spiritual and moral aims," a"contempt . . . for outward formalities," and it had given them thestrength to obey the "dictates of their consciences" even when theycontradicted the commands of the established authorities inChurch and state. These national traits were the great legacy ofthe English Reformation. They had survived into Gardiner'sown Victorian age, and he "fervently" hoped they would endureforever.56

Gardiner also concluded that Cromwell and the Puritans hadexerted a largely "negative" force on England's constitutionaldevelopment because it was their work of destruction, not creation,

56 Gardiner, Cromwell's Place in History, 4.

212 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

that continued beyond the Restoration. "It is impossible to resistthe conclusion," Gardiner declared in his Ford Lectures, "that[Cromwell] effected nothing in the way of building up where he hadpulled down, and that there was no single act of the Protectoratethat was not swept away at the Restoration without hope ofrevival."57 His victory in the Civil War and the executionof Charles I ensured that an English monarch would never againexercise absolute authority. Charles II may have returned to thethrone at the Restoration, but as Gardiner pointed out, "he sat onit under conditions very different from those of his father, and whenJames II reverted to his father's conception the Stuart monarchyfell, past recall." It was Cromwell and the Puritans, more thananyone else, who set the precedent that prevented the triumph ofabsolutism in England. Nor, according to Gardiner, wereCromwell's efforts directed solely at the crown. When he and thearmy dismissed the Long Parliament because it insisted onremaining in power even though it had long since ceased torepresent the nation, they made sure that England would never"tolerate a Parliament which . . . set the constituencies atdefiance."58 And when the Puritans overturned the Anglican Estab-lishment of Archbishop Laud, they guaranteed that "a persecutingChurch supporting itself on royal absolutism" would never appearagain.59 These were Cromwell's achievements and althoughGardiner considered them "negative actions,"60 he believed nonethe less that they occupied a crucial place in England's politicaldevelopment. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries,the basis of the constitution would shift from the supremacy of theking to the supremacy of the nation. That this transition occurredat all was due in large measure to Cromwell.

IV

The reform acts of 1867 and 1884, which ushered the Victorians intothe age of democracy, raised the question of whether Britain'spolitical institutions were capable of meeting the needs of time.Would the newly enlarged electorate return representatives ofsufficient caliber to pass the farsighted legislation required by

57 Ibid., 103-104. 58 Ibid., 104.59 Ibid., 45. 60 Ibid., 102.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 213

the new age? Would an executive dependent on a majority in theCommons be able to provide effective leadership? For manyLiberals, dissatisfaction with Gladstone's early legislation fed agrowing disillusionment with democracy as it had developed inBritain. The Liberal leader's apparent surrender to the masselectorate in his Midlothian campaigns and his desire to placate theIrish constituency during the Home Rule crisis seemed to confirmthat efficient and farsighted government was incompatible withBritish democracy. On this issue of democracy, the Cromwellianpast had lessons to teach. Carlyle, no friend to representativeassemblies, had already used the authoritarian element inCromwell to offer a critique of Parliamentary government, con-trasting the efficiency of the army to the incapacity of Parliament,a do-nothing talking apparatus.

Another biographer who used the life of Cromwell to commenton democracy was the Positivist Frederic Harrison. Havingembraced the Religion of Humanity as his Christian faith waned,Harrison employed the teachings of Auguste Comte as the basis fora critique of Victorian society that placed him on the radical wingof Liberal politics. Trade-union rights, franchise extension, seculareducation, the separation of Church and state, defense of theParisian Communards and Irish Home Rule were among the causesthat Harrison supported during his long career as a politicaljournalist.61 A longstanding admirer of Oliver Cromwell, Harrisonput the Protector to a suitable political use. In many ways, hisbiography of Cromwell, published in 1888 as part of John Morley'sTwelve English Statesmen series, was typical of other Liberalinterpretations. Post-Carlylean in its appreciation of Cromwell asan honest Puritan, it avoided Carlyle's hero-worship. Harrison'sCromwell was a friend of the poor, an advocate of toleration- indeed, "the most tolerant statesman of his time" - and a con-summate soldier. While his Irish policies were lamentable, theywere, Harrison claimed, no worse than those of any other Englishstatesman. In contrast to Gardiner, who would later emphasize the"negative" quality of Cromwell's work, Harrison stressed itspositive achievement. Cromwell was a statesman who destroyedthe feudal monarchy, laid the groundwork for England's future

61 For Harrison's politics, see Martha S. Vogeler, Frederic Harrison: The Vocations of a Positivist(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

214 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

constitutional development, and as Protector, provided Englandwith the best domestic administration it had ever known.62

What was most distinctive, however, about Harrison's Cromwellwas the way he used the Protectorate to criticize British Parlia-mentary democracy and to argue the case for strengthening theexecutive. After the Reform Act of 1867, Harrison developed acritique of Parliamentary government that he sustained throughthe remainder of the Victorian period. A nominal supporter of theGladstonian Liberal party, Harrison was constantly dissatisfiedwith the inadequacies of its legislation, which he believed hadnever gone far enough to redress the problems of modern society.Harrison based his critique on the republican ideal, which hedefined as government by a qualified minority, sustained in powerby the consent of a politically educated community, governing notin the interest of a particular party or class, but in the interest ofthe whole community. The problem with Britain's Parliamentarydemocracy was that it failed to meet the standards of this ideal. Inthe first place, Parliament was not representative of the nation andHarrison doubted that it would ever become so. Despite threereform acts, it was still a body composed of the rich and thepowerful, the lawyers and the journalists, which would neverwork in the interest of the entire nation. In the second place,the Victorian constitution had confused the legislature and theexecutive. Having developed over the centuries as an alternative toa despotic monarchy, Parliament had assumed all the powers ofgovernment, including those executive functions for which it wastotally unsuited. A deliberative assembly intended for discussionand debate, Parliament simply lacked the unity of purposenecessary to rule decisively. As a result, Britain's Parliamentarydemocracy was incapable of providing efficient government.Harrison's solution to this problem was to strengthen the executiveby placing government in the hands of a single statesman whowould receive the sanction of the public and act decisively in thenational interest.63 In this way the republican ideal would be

62 Frederic Harrison, Oliver Cromwell (London: Macmillan and Co., 1888), 21-32, 44-45,49> 57~64» 71—73, 128-129, 132-133, 139-140, 167, 208-209. Frederic Harrison, "RecentBiographies of Cromwell," George Washington and Other American Addresses (London:Macmillan and Co., 1901), 144-148.

63 Frederic Harrison, Order and Progress (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1875), 3-122.Frederic Harrison, "Republicanism and Democracy," Washington and Other Addresses, 165-187.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 215

fulfilled, efficient government restored, and the people would "finda hand to do their will, a voice to express their thoughts, and a brainto give effect to their purpose."64

In Cromwell, Harrison found an example of the strong executivehe desired, one who embodied the will of the nation and was able togovern decisively in its interest. For Harrison, Cromwell was a"conservative revolutionist," a remarkable leader who broughtEngland through a difficult period by reconciling the revolutionaryforces in the army with the traditional inclinations of the rest ofthe country. Cromwell was the reformer whose new modelingof the army had unleashed the radical tendencies within EnglishPuritanism, and yet he was also a traditionalist who realized that insettling the nation's affairs something of the old monarchicalconstitution must be retained. As a statesman, Cromwell thus stoodabove parties, using them in the interests of the nation as a whole,rather than being led by them. As a powerful executive, Cromwellalso overcame the problems of representation and indecisionthat Harrison thought characterized Parliamentary government.During the debates over the Self-Denying Ordinance, all thequalities that would later distinguish Cromwell from otherParliamentarians became apparent: he was a "statesman,"Harrison wrote, "impressing his policy on Parliament and thenation," a "man in authority," not an "orator addressing a senate."Following the execution of the king, it was Cromwell whoinstinctively represented the will of the nation, not the RumpParliament, which only represented itself, and it was Cromwell whoacted decisively, not the Rump, which became mired in endlessdebate.65

In the debates over the constitution that followed the expulsionof the Rump, Cromwell - as we might expect - stood for the veryposition that Harrison was proposing for his own age. As Harrisonexplained: "His whole soul rejected the idea of a mere Parlia-mentary executive," of a "government vested in a single electivechamber." Instead, Cromwell wanted a strong executive, rep-resented by a single person, independent of Parliament. Indeed, forHarrison the "whole future history of England lay in this struggle,- the alternative of the American system with its distinct personal

64 H a r r i s o n , Order and Progress, 4 1 .65 Harrison, Cromwell, 80—87, 101-103, 106-107, 114-116, 170-176.

216 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

executive, or the modern British system of a single supremeParliament having the executive as a part and creature of itself."On Cromwell's side, Harrison placed those English statesmen likeElizabeth, Wentworth and William III, as well as the AmericanFederalists, Washington, Hamilton, Jay and Madison. On the sideof Parliamentary government were republicans like Vane. To besure, Harrison admitted that in the long run Cromwell had lost andthat the Parliamentary solution had eventually triumphed inEngland. But, he went on, this victory did not mean that Cromwellwas necessarily wrong. In all of these discussions, Harrison insistedthat neither he nor Cromwell were advocating a simple dictator-ship. To the contrary, Cromwell always intended that the executive,though vested in a single person, should be limited by an electedParliament that would consent to taxation and pass the laws.66

Not all historians of the Stuart past, however, were ready toaccept Harrison's diagnosis of his government's ills and hisprescription for their cure. Gardiner acknowledged that Harrison'sinterpretation of the Protectorate contained a degree of truth.Cromwell, distrustful of an unlimited Parliament, did advocate astrong and independent executive much as Harrison claimed,which lent a certain legitimacy to his conduct as Protector. ButGardiner shared few of Harrison's misgivings about Parliamentarydemocracy and was not inclined to see in Cromwell a solution to aproblem which he felt did not exist. Besides, there were too manyother complications surrounding Cromwell's statesmanship tomake him a suitable model for contemporary government. Theunpopularity of his Puritanism and his reliance on the army, ifnothing else, discredited the prescriptive usefulness of theProtectorate.

Building on Gardiner's interpretation of the Puritan past, JohnMorley argued even more strenuously that Cromwell was aninappropriate model for democratic statesmanship. Friends fromthe 1860s, Morley and Harrison shared much in common. Theteachings of Auguste Comte had influenced them both early on,but whereas Harrison remained committee to the Religion ofHumanity, Morley eventually outgrew it. Both were attracted toradical causes, but were unsure whether Parliamentary govern-ment was the best way to balance order and social progress in an

66 Ibid., 174-176, 187, 193-197.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 217

age of mass politics. As a response to democracy, both wereattracted to strong men, seeing them as the leaders of politicalelites capable of providing progressive government in the nationalinterest. But as Morley was drawn into a political career, rep-resenting Newcastle in 1883, their attitudes to Parliamentarygovernment began to diverge. While Harrison remained a critic ofParliament, Morley became committed to the system, having fallenunder the tutelage first of Joseph Chamberlain and thenGladstone. Throughout his political career, Morley would continueto look to strong leaders, practical statesmen who balanced orderand progress by shaping public opinion.67 Judged by this standard,Gladstone was a success and Cromwell a failure.

For Morley, Cromwell succeeded only in those areas where forcewas effective. He was a "consummate" soldier, one of the "foremostmasters of the rough art of war," whose military victories destroyedthe Stuart monarchy and united the three kingdoms of England,Ireland and Scotland. After the anarchy of the Civil War, he main-tained order, becoming in his own quaint phrase the "constable ofthe parish," but he could not provide progressive leadership.Cromwell had no aptitude for speculative politics, and all ofhis attempts to create a lasting political settlement failed. TheProtectorate was all expediency, Morley complained, containingnothing that was systematic. Indeed, for Morley, Cromwell's impacton England's political development was insignificant. When apermanent revolution came in 1688, it bore no resemblance toCromwell's achievement: "it was aristocratic and not democratic,secular and not religious, parliamentary and not military, thesubstitution for the old monarchy of a territorial oligarchy supremealike in Lords and Commons."68 The lasting consequence of theGlorious Revolution was in fact a Parliamentary supremacythat Cromwell would have abhorred. Nor did Cromwell have anenduring influence on England's religious development. When theChurch returned after the Restoration, it was as powerful andoppressive as ever. Nor was Cromwell, so often described as theepitome of English Puritanism, an effective conduit for the trans-mission of Puritan ideals to later generations. That Puritanism

67 For the development of Morley's political views, see D. A. Hamer, John Morley: LiberalIntellectual in Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).

68 John Morley, Oliver Cromwell (New York: The Century Co., 1900), 5.

218 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

made its mark on English culture was due to Milton and Bunyan,not the Protector. The triumph of toleration, which Morleyacknowledged Cromwell had stood for, was due not to the Puritans,but rather to the growth of rationalism.69

As he recounted the struggles between the army and Parliamentfrom 1647 to 1653, Morley's sympathies lay with the remnant of theLong Parliament, the notorious Rump which most Cromwelliansdenounced as an intolerant, impractical and unrepresentativeminority. In pursuing such an individual interpretation, Morleyindicated clearly his own preference for Parliamentary institutions.The Civil War had been fought in large part to safeguard consti-tutional liberty, and Morley believed that once the war was over, thebest chance of preserving that liberty lay with Parliament. Theproblem with armed interference in politics was that one act ofpolitical violence tended to lead to another. Thus it was all butinevitable that the army's march on London in 1647, Pride's Purgein 1648 and Cromwell's dispersal of the Rump in 1653 had ter-minated in the military dictatorship of the Protectorate. Nothingdemonstrated better the dangers which the army posed to consti-tutional liberty than its efforts to purge the Commons of itsPresbyterian members. When the army marched on London in 1647,and conducted Pride's Purge in 1648, it violated constitutionalliberty as grossly as Charles had when he tried to arrest the leadersof the Commons in 1642.70 Those like Harrison, who defended thearmy on the grounds that it had become the real representative ofthe nation, were simply mistaken. It was Parliament, after all, notthe army, which understood that the nation wanted a settlementwith the king. "When we think that the end of these heroic twentyyears was the Restoration," reflected Morley, "it is not easy to seewhy we should denounce the pedantry of the Parliament, whoseideas for good or ill, at last prevailed, and should reserve all ourglorification for the army, who proved to have no ideas that wouldeither work or that the country would accept."71

To establish Cromwell as a model statesman was to legitimatethe use of force and the power of the state. Morley, who had longopposed imperialism because he believed it would erode the liberalfoundations of British politics, suspected that the authoritarianstate of the imperialists was among the "false directions" in which

69 Ibid., 4-6, 414, 465-472. 70 Ibid., 215-216, 330-333. 71 Ibid., 216.

Cromwell and the late Victorians 219Cromwell's example would lead. "It can hardly be accident," hewrote "that has turned [Cromwell] into one of the idols of theschool who hold, shyly as yet in England, but nakedly in Germany,that might is a token of right, and that the strength and power ofthe state is an end that tests and justifies all means." On more thanone occasion, Morley suggested that the ideal of a strong executivewhich informed the political practice of both Wentworth andCromwell would have led to the "qualified absolutism of modernPrussia."72 Rather than eulogize the Wentworths, Cromwells andBismarcks, Morley turned to the great Parliamentary leaders, thePyms of the past and the Gladstones of the present.73 Aftercompleting his biography of Cromwell, Morley began working onhis monumental Life of Gladstone, who more than anyone defined hisideal statesman. Where Cromwell relied on the force of arms toachieve his ends, Gladstone shaped public opinion. At all theimportant crises in his career - moments when a Cromwell wouldhave been tempted to call on his soldiers - Gladstone succeeded byconvincing the cabinet, Parliament and nation that his policy wasbest.74 We may admire Cromwell as a soldier who fought in anhonorable cause and who did his best in circumstances that wereoften beyond his control. We may respect him because he wrestledhonestly with the "ever-standing problems of the world."75 Butwhen we elevate his statesmanship, Morley warned, we do so at ourown peril.

Of all Cromwell's late Victorian biographers, Morley was amongthe most critical, and yet, in the end, even he found theCromwellian enterprise appealing: it had left behind, he reflected,"some noble thoughts, the memory of a brave struggle for humanfreedom, and a procession of strenuous master spirits, with Miltonand Cromwell at their head."76 Despite their differences, mostLiberals would have agreed with Morley that Cromwell was one ofthe "master spirits" of English history, and if we allow for thenuances generated by the controversies within Liberalism, we candiscern in their collective work a more or less coherent interpret-ation of the Cromwellian past. For most late Victorians, Cromwell

72 Ibid., 5, 35, 359, 469-470. 73 Ibid., 39-41.74 John Morley, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (London: Macmillan and Co., 1903), 3:

75 Morley, Cromwell, 5-6. 76 Ibid., 471-472.

220 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

was a great soldier, as Morley had asserted, but he was a greatstatesman as well. They generally accepted Carlyle's verdictthat Cromwell was a sincere Puritan whose statesmanship wasmotivated by religion more than politics. At its best, Puritanismgave his politics an idealism rarely found among statesmen, but atits worst it opened Cromwell to the charge of sectarianism. Hevalued toleration more than political freedom, and attempted tomaintain in power a Puritan oligarchy.

But for the late Victorians, Cromwell was also an English patriot.He successfully united England, Scotland and Ireland, though theseverity of his Irish policy was lamentable. Abroad, Cromwell'spolicy was bold and adventuresome. It secured England againstforeign intervention, advanced commerce and contributed toprosperity. Cromwell was a zealous proponent of colonial expansionand his policies laid the foundations of England's future empire. Athome, Cromwell desired to rule constitutionally and tried to freehimself from dependence on the army, though circumstancesprevented him from succeeding. He believed in popularsovereignty, the principle for which the Civil War had been fought,but tempered that principle with the conviction that the peoplemight not always do what was in their best interest. When hisParliaments thought differently than he did, particularly when theybegan to question the foundation of his government, Cromwell wasnot afraid to dispense with them and govern by himself. With orwithout Parliament, however, his leadership was always an honestattempt to serve the national interest. Though the unpopularity ofhis Puritanism ensured that many of his accomplishments woulddisappear after his death, he nevertheless achieved great things."Thanks to his sword," wrote the Oxford historian Charles Firth,"absolute monarchy failed to take root in English soil. Thanks to hissword Great Britain emerged from the chaos of the civil wars onestrong state instead of three separate and hostile communities."77

Truly, Cromwell and the Puritans had entered the acceptable past.

77 C. H. Firth, Oliver Cromwell and the Rule of the Puritans in England, third edition (London:G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1929), 486.

EPILOGUE

Beyond the Victorians

In 1904, G. M. Trevelyan published his England under the Stuarts, thefirst important interpretation of the seventeenth century to appearsince S. R. Gardiner had completed his life's work, and onecontaining an eulogy on the English national character appropriatefor Macaulay's grandnephew. Of all England's achievements,Trevelyan wrote, "there is one, the most insular in origin, and yetthe most universal in effect":While Germany boasts her Reformation and France her Revolution,England can point to her dealings with the House of Stuart. Our TudorReformation, although it affected greater changes in the structure ofEnglish society and the evolution of English intellect, was but one partof a movement general throughout Europe. But the transference ofsovereignty from Crown to Parliament was effected in direct antagonismto all continental tendencies. During the seventeenth century a despoticscheme of society and government was so firmly established in Europe,that but for the course of events in England it would have been the solesuccessor of the mediaeval system . . . But at this moment the English,unaware of their destiny and of their service, tenacious only of their rights,their religion, and their interests, evolved a system of government whichdiffered as completely from the new continental model as it did from thechartered anarchy of the Middle Ages.1

To emphasize England's singularity, to point out its good fortune athaving preserved its free institutions at a time when continentalregimes were turning to absolutism, to describe England's destinyin messianic terms as the savior of European liberty - all wereattitudes common to English historical writing. In spirit at least,Trevelyan's claims added little to Hallam's belief, articulatedalmost a century earlier, that England's constitution was "the most

1 George Macaulay Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, thirteenth edition (London:Methuen and Co., 1926), 1-2.

221

222 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

beautiful phaenomenon in the history of mankind."2 But in oneimportant respect, Trevelyan's emphasis was different: "theEnglish under the Stuarts," he wrote, "had achieved their emanci-pation from monarchical tyranny by the act of the national will."3

By interpreting the seventeenth century as an expression ofnational unity, Trevelyan proved himself the heir of the Victorians.That he could state the proposition as a matter of fact, as receivedwisdom, indicates how thoroughly the Victorian achievement hadbeen internalized.

For Trevelyan, the seventeenth century was a crucial step in thebuilding of a free and tolerant English nation. Divided in the 1640s,England came together in the 1680s in order to defend its religionand its freedom. The Civil War had raised the problem of libertyat a time when neither Roundhead nor Cavalier was prepared tosolve it, though Cromwell and the Puritans went far toward under-standing the value of toleration. When James II raised the questionagain, England had learned from forty years of strife the import-ance of civil peace. The result was the Glorious Revolution, apolitical compromise that placed the monarchy beneath the lawand guaranteed individual liberty. Most important, however, itunited the nation. The Revolution settlement, Trevelyan con-cluded, "stanched for ever the blood feud of Roundhead andCavalier, of Anglican and Puritan . . . Under it, England has lived atpeace within herself ever since." Because the Revolution finallyunited the nation, it provided the permanent foundation on whichall future liberal reform would be built. The Revolution settlement,Trevelyan continued, "stood almost unaltered until the era of theReform Bill of 1832. And throughout the successive stages of rapidchange that have followed, its fundamentals have remained tobear the weight of the vast democratic superstructure which thenineteenth and twentieth centuries have raised upon its surefoundation."4 For Trevelyan, then, the Stuart past became thepivotal moment in England's constitutional development.

The Victorians, preoccupied with sectarian controversy, hadstressed the religious dimension of the seventeenth century, and

2 Henry Hallam, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, seventh edition (Paris:Baudry's European Library, 1840), 2: 1.

3 Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, 516.4 George Macaulay Trevelyan, The English Revolution, i688-i68g (New York: Henry Holt and

Company, 1939), 4-5.

Beyond the Victorians 223Trevelyan incorporated their insights into his own interpretation.Like Carlyle, he conceived of the period as one of conflict betweenCatholicism and Protestantism. Like Gardiner, he saw thatreligious issues ultimately divided the parties that fought the CivilWar. The Catholic policies of the Stuarts, particularly Laud'sattempt to impose an Anglo-Catholic uniformity on the Church,alienated the nation from the court, while disputes over Episcopacyand the Prayer Book finally separated Anglican from Puritan,Cavalier from Roundhead. For Trevelyan as well as for Gardiner,the emergence of the principle of toleration conferred nobility onthe otherwise lamentable internecine strife of the 1640s. Thoughborn prematurely during the Civil War, this principle finallytriumphed forty years later with the Glorious Revolution. LikeMacaulay, Trevelyan saw in William's latitudinarian sentimentsthe solution to England's sectarian difficulties as freedom ofconscience became embodied in the Toleration Act of 1689, "one ofthe most lastingly successful measures ever passed by Parliament,"and one which "closed for ever the long chronicle of religiouspersecution and religious war."5

But unlike the Victorians, whose involvement in sectariancontroversy prevented them from settling the issues raised by theStuart past, Trevelyan brought these issues to a kind of nationalresolution. Nowhere was this more apparent than in his treatmentof Puritanism. For most of the Victorian period, the subject ofPuritanism had divided historians along denominational lines. Inthe early nineteenth century, Nonconformists like William Godwin,John Forster and Robert Vaughan had championed the Puritans,while spokesmen for the Establishment had condemned them assubversives. Even Establishment liberals like Macaulay, who wereattracted to the Puritan cause in the Civil War because it was alsothe Parliamentarian cause, were uncomfortable with its excesses.This tendency to equate Puritanism with Dissent persistedthroughout the century to such an extent that Gardiner found itnecessary to mediate between sectarian parties in the interest ofhistorical accuracy and national unity. By Trevelyan's time, how-ever, the denominational disputes that once politicized discussionsof Puritanism had largely abated as England accommodatedDissent and as the growth of secularism united Churchman and

5 Ibid., 166.

224 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

Dissenter in a common struggle against unbelief. Trevelyanaccepted the claim, made repeatedly by Victorian Dissenters, thatthe Puritans had rescued English liberty from Stuart absolutism.But he addressed the issue in a way that demonstrated howthoroughly sectarian controversy had subsided. For the Puritanismthat Trevelyan described was truly national, the property of no onedenomination. It was the serious, thoughtful Christianity of allProtestants from Anglicans to Quakers. Drawing on Carlyle,Trevelyan described this Puritanism as an emotion, a spiritualintensity, free from those doctrinal, ceremonial or ecclesiasticalconsiderations that distinguished one denomination from another.6

If, as Trevelyan suggested, England in the early seventeenthcentury was Puritan, then the Churchmen who opposed thePuritans must have been mistaken. Just as the accommodation ofDissent in the nineteenth century represented a victory for liberalAnglicanism and a defeat for the High Churchmanship thatresolutely opposed concessions to Dissent, so in the historiographyof the Stuarts the triumph of Puritanism entailed the defeat of theLaudians. As part of their campaign against the Establishment,Dissenters routinely contrasted the intolerance of the StuartChurch to the appreciation of religious freedom that eventuallytook hold among the Puritans. Hallam and Macaulay, Whigs whosupported concessions to Dissent, similarly disapproved of thepersecuting policies of the Laudians and used their histories topromote a liberal Anglicanism that was comprehensive andtolerant. Even Gardiner, who was more charitable than most tothe Laudian school, noting its contribution to the latitudinarianthinking of a later generation, found little to praise in the policiesof Archbishop Laud. Trevelyan, a descendant of the Macaulays andthe Arnolds who once identified himself as an "Anglican agnostic,"was immersed in the tradition of liberal Anglicanism.7 For him, theLaudians were an unpopular Anglo-Catholic minority withinthe Church. Illiberal in their politics and religion, they supportedthe absolutism of the Stuarts and opposed the right to privatejudgment that lay at the heart of English Protestantism.8

6 Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, 58-66.7 Noel Annan, Leslie Stephen: The Godless Victorian (New York: Random House, 1984),

234-8 Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, 150-153.

Beyond the Victorians 225For the Victorians, Roman Catholicism posed a problem in large

part because of its association with Ireland. The Stuart past spokedirectly to the contemporary Irish problem because for much of theVictorian period the Cromwellian settlement provided the basis forEngland's supremacy in Ireland. Just as the demands of Dissentpoliticized treatments of Puritanism, so the question of Irishreform conferred an ideological dimension on discussions of theAnglo-Irish past. Hallam, Macaulay and Gardiner, Whigs andLiberals who hoped to maintain England's connection with Irelandby reforming its abuses, all used the Anglo-Irish past to identifyEngland's prior mistakes and to propose remedies for the future.Only Carlyle and his unionist followers argued the paradoxicalposition that England's injustice to Ireland was its decision todiscontinue the full extent of the Cromwellian settlement. Withthe creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, however, the history ofEngland's relations with Ireland could be placed in more nationalcontext. In his celebration of the Glorious Revolution, written in1939 to commemorate its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary,Trevelyan remained true to his liberal heritage and condemnedthe Cromwellian settlement as unjust. Its legacy, he pointedout, was more than two centuries of Anglo-Irish animosity. Butthe subjection of Ireland was also a prerequisite for England'ssecurity. William's reconquest of Ireland, Trevelyan declared,"which meant slavery for Ireland, meant freedom and safety forEngland, and in the long run for Europe" because it was "part of thegreat European struggle for religious and international freedomagainst France."9

To search for sources of unity in the turmoil of the seventeenthcentury was an enterprise common to the Victorians and theirsuccessors. And yet an important distinction separated the two. TheVictorians were still feeling the effects of the sectarian controversywhich everyone regarded as the consequence of the Stuart past,whereas their twentieth-century successors for the most part werenot. When Macaulay or Gardiner spoke of the Glorious Revolutionor the Civil War as a national event, they were doing so in order toencourage a unity that later generations would take for granted.Both Macaulay and Gardiner developed their interpretations atmoments when denominational conflict was a dominant and

9 Trevelyan, English Revolution, 242-262, 249.

226 The Victorians and the Stuart heritage

potentially disruptive factor in national politics. Macaulay beganwork on his history during the twenty years following the repeal ofthe Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, a time when the Dissenters'demands for the elimination of their remaining disabilities clashedwith the Whigs' traditional support for the Anglican Church, andwhen peace in Ireland required concessions to Roman Catholicismand reform of the Irish Establishment. Responding to theseconcerns, Macaulay used the Stuart past to free liberalism asmuch as possible from its religious preoccupations and to laythe groundwork for a comprehensive religious settlement thatwould include Protestant Dissent as well as Irish Catholicism.Gardiner, too, conceived his view of the Stuart past at a time ofheightened sectarian conflict. During the 1860s and 1870s, asDissent became an increasingly influential force behind theLiberal party, Gardiner came to believe that applying the scientificmethod to the past would enable the historian to overcomesectional interests and create an interpretation that was trulynational.

By Trevelyan's time, these religious battles were mostly over,and in his history there were already indications of the newcontroversies to come. Now that sectarian discord no longer dividedEnglish society, now that the disruptive forces released by theReformation seemed reconciled, the Stuart past could beinterpreted as an example of organic unity. Trevelyan approachedthe seventeenth century much as the Victorians had approachedthe Middle Ages - as a time of harmony before industrializationdisturbed social peace, pitting class against class. "England," hewrote, "was a land of local government, local armaments, localfeeling, where the life of the shire, the parish and the city wasvigorous, yet where no feud existed between country and town;where ranks were for ever mingling; where the gentry intermarriedwith the middle class, and shared with them the commercial andprofessional careers."10 And just as the Victorians' idealization ofthe Middle Ages masked their anxieties about the rifts in their ownsociety, so Trevelyan's image of a socially integrated Englandsuggests growing fears about the impact of economic forces ontwentieth-century England. Indeed, the tone of the coming agewas captured not so much by Trevelyan as by Tawney, whose

10 Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, 71.

Beyond the Victorians 227

Protestantism and the Rise of Capitalism appeared in 1926, the year ofthe General Strike, and assessed the contribution of Puritanism notin the Victorian terms of liberty, toleration or piety, but in the newterms of economic development. The next generation of scholars,building on the labors of the Victorians, would ultimately leavetheir predecessors' concerns behind.

Index

Althorp, Lord, 28, 56, 57, 58Arnold, Matthew, 77, 167, 180-182, 210-211Atterbury, Francis, 87

Bacon, Francis, 69, 114, 163, 171-172, 173,208, 209

Bagehot, Walter, 77Baxter, Richard, 78-79Bayne, Peter, 134, 135, 136, 137, 165Belsham, William, 96Bentham, Jeremy, 77, 136Benthamites, 32, 59, 60, 63, 122Bismarck, Otto von, 187, 219Boer War, 158, 185, 187Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount, 32Bonaparte, Napoleon, 23, 27-29, 96Boyle, Robert, 138Brady, Robert, 32-33Brent, Richard, 26n, 56, 64Brodie, George, 97, 98Broglie, Due de, 23, 47-48Brougham, Henry Peter, 25, 27, 28Browning, Robert, 104Bryce, James, 155, 156, 158, 161Bunyan, John, 218Burke, Edmund, 2, 7, 13-14, 16, 29, 38, 77, 95,

96, 115, 152, 185, 208, 210use of the Stuart past, 14-16and Hallam, 20, 35, 36-37, 47, 49

Canning, George, 152, 153Cardale, John Bate, 142, 143Carlyle, Thomas, 23, 104

his politics, 121, 122, 123, 128-130his religion, 118-120, 126reception of his Cromwell, 21, 77, 132-138,

190, 192, 193, 196, 213, 220, 223, 224,225

writing of his Cromwell, 117-118, 124on Cromwell, 20, 55, 119, 120, 122-132on Ireland, 131-132

on Puritanism, 19, 118, 120-122, 123-128,134

and Gardiner, 172, 198-199, 200-201, 210Catholic Apostolic Church, see IrvingitesCavaliers, 61-62, 63Chalmers, Thomas, 142, 180Chamberlain, Joseph, 158, 217Chambers, E. K., 156Charles I (king of England), 30

Carlyle on, 123, 125, 127Croker on, 38Dissenters on, 94Gardiner on, 169-170, 173-174, 206, 207Hallam on, 40, 42-43Hume on, 9-10, 41Catharine Macaulay on, 39T. B. Macaulay on, 59Masson on, 180Morley on, 218Vaughanon, inVictorians on, 1, 55

Charles II (king of England), 102, 212Chillingworth, William, 46, 47, 178, 179Civil War, English, 2-3

Burke on, 15Carlyle on, 120, 122, 123, 124-125, 126-128,

129Croker on, 38Fox on, 19Gardiner on, 167-168, 170-173, 175, 177,

178, 179, 182Godwin on, 99-100, 103Hume on, 7Hallam on, 42-43, 49, 51T. B. Macaulay on, 21, 51-52, 59-62Morley on, 218Seeley on, 189Trevelyan on, 222, 223

Coke, Edward, 35Commonwealth, English, 13

Belsham on, 96

228

Index 229

Brodie on, 97Burke on, 15Carlyle on, 120Dissenters on, 94, 95-96, 115, 116Forster on, 104-105, 106-108, 115, 116Gardiner on, 180, 203, 206, 210Godwin on, 39, 98, 101-103, 108Hume on, 11Kippis on, 96Catharine Macaulay on, 18, 39T. B. Macaulay on, 60-61, 62Priestley on, 95Vaughan on, 113, 137-138

Comte, Auguste, 213, 216constitution, Gardiner on, 168-169constitution, ancient, 5, 7, 14, 32—33constitution, Anglican, 2, 20, 21, 37-38, 55,

86Hume on, 12-13T. B. Macaulay on, 64-66Southey on, 2, 38, 63-64

constitution, mixed or balanced, 23-24Hallam on, 29—30, 31, 33-34, 40, 41, 43,

47-48, 52Hume on, 5—6

Creighton, Mandell, 52Croker, John Wilson, 38, 39, 77, 89-90Crolly, George, 132Cromwell, Oliver, 2, 14, 96

Bagehot on, 77Belsham on, 96Carlyle on, 20, 55, 119, 120, 122-132Dissenters on, 2, 21, 116, 133-138, 193-198Firth on, 220Forster on, 106, 107-108, 116, 133-134Fox on, 19Froude on, 192-193Gardiner on, 3, 163, 179, 186, 198-212, 216Gilfillan on, 136Godwin on, 39, 101-103Hallam on, 46R. Harris on, 197Harrison on, 213-216Hocking on, 195Hood on, 194, 195Horton on, 194, 196Hume on, 4, 7, 11-12imperialists on, 186, 187-193Lloyd George on, 193, 195Catharine Macaulay on, 18T. B. Macaulay on, 20, 60—61, 76, 103, 116Masson on, 180Millar on, 16-17Morley on, 216-219J. B. Mozley on, 132

Picton on, 197Rosebery on, 185-186Seeley on, 187, 189-191, 192-193W. H. Smith on, 133Tangye on, 195Trevelyan on, 222Vaughan on, 112, 113-114, 115, 116, 133,

137-138Victorians on, 1-4, 12, 19-22, 55, 184-187,

219-220

Darwin, Charles, 161, 165Disraeli, Benjamin, 150-151, 153, 187, 200Dissent, 21, 55, 93-96, 115-117, 172, 193-198,

200-202T. B. Macaulay on, 74-79and Carlyle, 133-138

Drake, Francis, 189Drummond, Henry, 142, 143, 144

Eliot, John, 18, 104-105, 107, 171Elizabeth I (queen of England)

Gardiner on, 169-170, 173, 205Hallam on, 40, 41-42, 45-46Harrison on, 216Hume on, 8-9, 41-42T. B. Macaulay on, 60, 64Seeley on, 189

Elliot, William, 28Erastianism, 46, 56, 86-88, 89, 159-160

Firth, Charles Harding, 146, 220Fitzwilliam, 2nd Earl, 28Forbes, Duncan, 5, 6nForster, John, 166, 180, 193, 223

politics and religion, 103-105on the Stuart past, 21, 55, 104-108,

115-116, 138on Cromwell, 106-108, 116and Carlyle, 133-134

Fox, Charles James, 13, 19, 20, 23, 24, 67, 107Fox, W. J., 104Foxites, 23-25, 27, 28, 29, 49, 57, 58Freeman, Edward Augustus, 52, 156, 161French Revolution, 1-2, 13-14, 23, 27-29,

36-37? 67, 95, 96, 97, 152, 185, 208, 210Froude, James Anthony, 52, 119, 192-193, 205

Gardiner, Charles Baring, 142, 145Gardiner, Rawson Boddam, 141-142, 145, 146Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, 52, 105, 221

as historian, 139-141, 148-150, 166-168,198, 211, 226

his Irvingism, 141-142, 145-150his Liberal politics, 140, 150-163

230 Index

Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (cont.)on the Anglo-Irish past, 154-155, 157,

205-206, 225on the constitution, 168-169on the craft of history, 163-168on Cromwell and Puritanism, 3, 20, 186,

198-212, 216, 223on the Tudor-Stuart past, 22, 169-183,

224and Carlyle, 118, 198—199, 200-201, 210

Gilfillan, George, 136Gladstone, William Ewart, 150-153, 155-162,

187-188, 192-193, 213, 214, 217, 219Glorious Revolution

in Anglo-Irish rhetoric, 84Burke on, 14-15, 37, 115Churchmen on, 89Dissenters on, 95-96Fox on, 19and Foxites, 24Gardiner on, 179Godwin on, 103Hallam on, 20, 31, 37, 40, 43, 54, 115Hume on, 4-5, 7, 13Kippis on, 96T. B. Macaulay on, 54, 55, 59-60, 66-67,

69, 78, 84-86, 90Mackintosh on, 54Morley on, 217Price on, 14-15Priestley on, 96Pusey on, 91Trevelyan on, 222, 223, 225

Godson, Arthur Richard, 147Godwin, William, 41, 52, 60, 134, 179, 193,

223his republicanism, 97-101, 103, 106on the Stuart past, 21, 39, 98-103, 115,

.38on Cromwell, 101-103, 108and Rational Dissent, 95, 97, 104

Gorham case, 87Gould, Margaret Baring, 142Grenville, 1st Baron, 28Grey, Charles, 25, 28

Hale, Matthew, 35Hales, John, 47Hallam, Henry, 59, 115, 225

his reputation, 23, 48-52his Whiggism, 43views on politics and the constitution,

29—34, 221-222on Church and state, 43-47, 224on Parliamentary reform, 47-48

on the philosophy of history, 34-37on the Tudor-Stuart past, 19-20, 21,

37-38, 40-43, 54and the Whig party, 26-29

Hamilton, Alexander, 216Hampden case, 87Hampden, John, 61-63, 101, 107, 125Hanoverians, 3-4, 5-7, 13, 14, 16, 17, 48Harris, Rendel, 197Harrison, Frederic, 163, 208, 209, 213-216,

216-217, 218Harvey, William, 138Hoadly, Benjamin, 47Hocking, Silas, 195Holland, 3rd Baron, 28, 107Hood, E. Paxton, 194, 195Hook, Walter Farquhar, 158-159, 182Hooker, Richard, 46, 176, 178Horner, Francis, 25, 27, 28Horton, Robert F., 194, 196, 198Hume, David

views on politics, 3-7, 13on the Tudor-Stuart past, 7-12on the Church, 12-13and later historical debate, 14, 15-16,

17-18, 19, 20, 38-39, 41-42, 49, 97,98-99, 200

Hume, Joseph, 58Hyde, Edward, 177, 202

imperialism, 157-158, 186, 187-193, 200,204-205, 206, 218-219

IndependentsBelsham on, 96Carlyle on, 125Dissenters on, 95-96Gardiner on, 178-179, 207-208Godwin on, 39, 98-100, 101, 102Hallam on, 46Hume on, 11Catharine Macaulay on, 18-19Masson on, 180Millar on, 16-17, 19Priestley on, 95Vaughan on, 112see also Puritans

Ireland, 37, 55, 79-80Cromwellian settlement of, 131-132, 192,

205-206, 225Home Rule, 153-157, 162, 187-188,

192-193, 213Insurrection of 1641, 154-155, 192and Hallam, 26, 44-45and Macaulay, 55-56, 71, 75, 79-80, 80-86,

92

Index 231

Irving, Edward, 142-143, 144Irving, Isabella, 146Irvingites, 141, 142-150

Jacobites, 4, 6, 7James I (king of England), 7-9, 41-42, 50—51,

169-170,173-174James II (king of England)

Gardiner on, 212Hallam on, 43Hume on, 4T. B. Macaulay on, 59, 70, 78, 84-85,

9OJay, John, 216Jeffrey, Francis, 16, 25, 27, 28, 39

Kippis, Andrew, 96Knox, John, 120—121, 122-123

Langford, Paul, 4Lansdowne, 3rd Marquess, 27, 47, 57, 67Lardner, Dionysius, 104Laud, William

Arnold on, 181Carlyle on, 123, 125Dissenters on, 94Gardiner on, 150, 167-168, 174-175,

176-178, 180-183, 2IO» 2 I 2

Hallam on, 45Hook on, 159, 182Hume on, 12-13Catharine Macaulay on, 18T. B. Macaulay on, 65-66, 89Masson on, 180Tractarians on, 55Trevelyan on, 223, 224Vaughan on, 111Victorians on, 1, 55, 224

Laudians, see Laud, WilliamLeighton, Robert, 87Leslie, John, 44Liberal Anglicans, 56-59, 64, 160, 180-181,

211, 224Lloyd George, David, 193, 195Locke, John, 47, 107, 178Long Parliament

Carlyle on, 129-130Croker on, 38Gardiner on, 205, 212Godwin on, 98-99Hallam on, 19, 40, 42-43Hume on, 9-10T. B. Macaulay on, 51Morley on, 218Vaughan on, 113

Macaulay, Catharine, 13, 17-19, 39, 41, 52,60

Macaulay, Thomas Babingtonreception of his History of England, 53-54,

73, 77, 82-83, 84views on politics and religion, 55-56,

57-59. 67on the Anglican constitution, 63-66on Christianity, 68on Church and state, 68—74, 86—92on Dissent, 74-79on Ireland, 79—86on the Tudor-Stuart past, 20, 21, 22,

59-63, 64-67, 69-70, 72-73, 76, 77-79,84-86, 88-89, 91

and Hallam, 50-52and later historical debate, 103, 113, 116,

139, 164-165, 166, 190, 221, 223, 225-226Mackintosh, Sir James, 25, 54, 67, 142Madison, James, 216Magna Carta, 33, 42Masson, David, 164, 165, 180Melbourne, 2nd Viscount, 56, 67, 74, 93—94,

128Mill, John Stuart, 117Millar, John, 13, 16-17, 18-19, 34, 35-36,

5!-52, 98Milton, John, 61-63, 107, 138, 180, 218, 219Milton, Viscount, 49Morley, John, 156, 158, 162, 184, 187, 213,

216-219Motley, John Lothrop, 164Mozley, J. B., 132-133

nationalism, liberal, 151-152, 160-163,167-168, 200

Newman, John Henry, 82, 90non-intrusion controversy, 87-88Nonjurors, 55, 91

O'Connell, Daniel, 79Oxford Movement, see Tractarians

Palmerston, 3rd Viscount, 152, 153Parliamentary reform

Hallam on, 47-48, 49contrasted to T. B. Macaulay, 50-52, 60

Parnell, Charles Stewart, 196, 197Peel, Robert, 128, 161Pitt, William (the elder), 151Pitt, William (the younger), 152, 161Perks, R. W., 193-194Peters, Hugh, 15Petition of Right, 9, 42Picton, J. Allanson, 197

232 Index

PresbyteriansBelsham on, 96Carlyle on, 125Gardiner on, 178, 207Godwin on, 99-100Hume on, 11Catharine Macaulay on, 19Millar on, 16, 19Vaughan on, 113, 137see also Puritans

Price, Richard, 14-15, 38, 77, 95, 97, 104,108

Priestley, Joseph, 95-96, 97, 104, 108Protectorate

Brodie on, 97Dissenters on, 94, 115, 116Gardiner on, 180, 203-204, 205, 206, 210,

216Harrison on, 214Hume on, 12Masson on, 180Morley on, 218Seeley on, 189—191Vaughan on, 113, 115, 137-138see also Cromwell, Oliver

Public Worship Regulation Act, 158-160Puritans, 2-3, 13

Arnold on, 77, 181-182, 210-211Bayne on, 136, 137Belsham on, 96Burke on, 14-16, 38, 77, 210Carlyle on, 118, 120-122, 123-128, 134Croker on, 77Crolly on, 132Dissenters on, 2, 21, 55, 94, 96, 115-117,

Forster on, 21, 55, 107, 115Fox on, 19Gardiner on, 20, 150, 167-168, 173-176, 177,

178—179, 181-182, 199-212Godwin on, 21, 98-100Harrison on, 215Hume on, 4, 7, 10-12Catharine Macaulay on, 18-19T. B. Macaulay on, 61-63, 66, 76, 77-78Millar on, 16-17, 18—19Morley on, 217-218Mozley on, 133Perks on, 193-194Seeley on, 190W. H. Smith on, 133Stoughton on, 136Trevelyan on, 222, 223Vaughan on, 21, 55, 111-112, 114, 115, 135,

137-138

Victorians on, 1-4, 19-22, 55, 220,223-224

Pusey, E. B., 91Pym, John, 104-105, 107, 125, 171, 172, 177,

219

Raleigh, Walter, 189Ranke, Leopold von, 165, 167Reformation

Carlyle on, 120-123Gardiner on, 173, 182, 211Hallam on, 45, 50T. B. Macaulay on, 50, 65, 88-89Vaughan on, inSouthey on, 1Trevelyan on, 221

Renaissance, 8, 176, 181republicanism

Forster on, 106Godwin's, 39, 97-101, 103Harrison's, 214-215Catharine Macaulay's, 17-18and T. B. Macaulay, 60-61

Restoration, Bourbon, 28-29Restoration, Stuart

Burke on, 15Carlyle on, 123, 128, 131-132Gardiner on, 180, 182Hallam on, 40, 45T. B. Macaulay on, 89Morley on, 217

Robertson, John, 117Robertson, William, 36Rosebery, 5th Earl, 184, 185-186, 188, 196Russell, C. W., 82Russell, Lord John, 37, 47, 50, 56, 57, 58, 67,

109, 152, 153

Salisbury, 3rd Marquess, 158, 200Seeley, John Robert, 167, 183, 187-191,

191-193, 198, 204Smith, Adam, 36, 161Smith, William Henry, 133South, Robert, 87Southey, Robert, 1, 2, 38, 63-64standing army debate, 51-52Stoughton, John, 136Strachey, Lytton, 139, 140Strafibrd, Earl of, see Wentworth, ThomasStubbs, William, 52

Tait, Archibald Campbell, 158-159Tangye, Richard, 195Tawney, R. H., 226—227Taylor, Jeremy, 47

Index 233

Thiersch, H. W. J., 146Thirlwall, Connop, 87Thomas, William, 25Thornycroft, Hamo, 184Tillotson, John, 87Toleration Act, 72-73, 182, 223Tractarians, 54, 55, 56, 86, 89, 90-92, 114,

144-145, 158Trevelyan, George Macaulay, 221-226Tyrone, 2nd Earl, 157

utilitarians, see Benthamites

Vane, Henry (the younger), 101, 104-105,107-108, 115, 116, 216

Vaughan, Robert, 180, 193, 223views on politics and religion, 108-110on Carlyle, 133, 134, 135on Cromwell, 113-114, 116, 137-138on Macaulay, 73on the Tudor-Stuart past, 21, 55, 110-115,

135.137-138

Victorianson the Stuart past, 1-4, 19-22, 54-55,

184-187, 222-227

Warburton, William, 106Washington, George, 20, 61, 216Webb Seymour, Lord, 35Wentworth, Thomas

Gardiner on, 155, 163, 171, 206, 208, 209Harrison on, 216Hume on, 10Morley on, 219

Whigs, see Foxites and Liberal AnglicansWilliam III (king of England)

in Anglo-Irish rhetoric, 84Dissenters on, 96Hallam on, 31Harrison on, 216Kippis on, 96T. B. Macaulay on, 55, 69-70, 85-86, 92Trevelyan on, 223

Wordsworth, William, 195